The psychedelic and lo-fi R&B and bedroom pop ballad was produced by Lacy and is built around a slightly warped guitar riff, which is accompanied by a funky bassline, drums and synthesisers.

Over the following year, it was changed substantially from its original version and received writing contributions from singers Fousheé and Diana Gordon.

After its release, "Bad Habit" and sped-up versions of it became popular on TikTok in July 2022 and it became Lacy's first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 that same month.

In 2015, Lacy became a member of the Los Angeles-based R&B and neo soul group The Internet, an offshoot of the hip hop collective Odd Future,[1] and found success as a solo artist starting in 2017 from independently producing music on his iPhone with the help of GarageBand.

His debut extended play (EP), Steve Lacy's Demo, was released in 2017; its single "Dark Red" went viral on TikTok in August 2021.

[2] Lacy went on to release his debut studio album, Apollo XXI, in 2019, which he wrote, produced, and mixed on his own, and to collaborate on songs with J. Cole, Solange, Tyler, the Creator, Mac Miller, Vampire Weekend, Kendrick Lamar, Dev Hynes, and YG.

[22][15] Lacy sings about his regret over missing the chance to tell someone he is attracted to them[23] due to his shyness[24] over a funky bassline,[25][26] "messy-sounding" drums, funk-styled synths,[27] and a repetitive,[2] slightly warped[1] guitar riff, the last of which was mixed by Pogue to be the song's main focus.

[10][29] The song's title is borrowed from another lyric in its chorus: "I bite my tongue, it's a bad habit/Kinda mad that I didn't take a stab at it".

[16] HipHopDX's Lauren Floyd stated that Lacy sang with a "boyish tone" that "transports listeners back to the MTV golden era of spring break beach jams".

For Billboard, Andrew Unterberger called "Bad Habit" a "perfect pop song" that displayed Lacy's "impossibly high-level" craft, adding that it "never ran out of new thrills, big and small, to get you swooning like the first time  ... you heard it".

[29] Pitchfork's Stephen Kearse praised "Bad Habit" as a highlight from Gemini Rights, calling its chorus a "knockout earworm".

[35][36] Mic's Austin Williams praised "Bad Habit" as "immediately singable and instantly replayable", deeming its melodies "addictive" and its lyrics "endearing".

[24] For The Guardian, Shaad D'Souza opined that it was "arguably" the best song to "spring forth from the new wave of TikTok-beloved lo-fi bedroom pop stars such as Clairo and Beabadoobee" and that it "captures all the brilliance of Lacy's outstanding second record Gemini Rights".

[9] For GQ, Insanul Ahmed stated that "Bad Habit" "feels like it could have been released in any era of music", describing it as "a despondent anthem that remarkably manages to fit into everyone's Instagram story montage".

[3] For the Washington Post, Chris Kelly described "Bad Habit" as "a gentle pop earworm that sounds like staring at stars glued to a bedroom ceiling".

[53] The music video for "Bad Habit" was directed by Julian Klincewicz, who also photographed the cover for Gemini Rights, and released on the same day as the single.

[45] English band Wet Leg performed a post-punk cover of "Bad Habit" for the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge in September 2022.

Stephen Thompson wrote of the performance for NPR that "Lacy and his band didn't do much to elevate the material onstage" and that "the energy levels [were] set to 'mid'".