"Honey" is produced by Joseph Mount of Metronomy, co-produced and co-written by Robyn and her frequent collaborators Klas Åhlund and Markus Jägerstedt, and mixed by the late Phillip Zdar of Cassius.

After a year in Stockholm starting in roughly mid-2012, "learning production on a non-profit course that she helped to develop further with her own tech festival Tekla", Robyn was picking up “hypnotic”, "weird" rhythms on some of her music programs and machines.

Following a period of personal trauma in 2013 and 2014 including a breakup with Max Vitali and the death of her close friend Christian Falk, Robyn started writing for the album again in 2015 and brought the beat out to layer on again.

Initially uncomfortable with the thought of collaborating again, she finally reached out to Klas Ahlund after several weeks, feeling a "freedom" to describe her ideas in a much more "protected" format given she was presenting a song she had built on her own from the ground-up.

Aiming for slightly more "hints" of an "actual choral structure", and at least a "simple melody" that could still "leave space for a lot up to the imagination", she was inspired by dance music she listened to growing up that didn't have a definitive beginning and end.

[22][23] Filling out the rest of the track's production are synths and filters from numerous machines and digital controllers belonging to herself, her co-producers and co-writers including but not limited to DAW and MIDI sequencer Logic Pro, an "old analogue" LinnDrum, and others Robyn said she "collected over the years", specifically from late friend Christian Falk.

[24] The "woozy", "languid", "gauzy" and "sensual" production including a "seductive", "aching" hook is meant to "amplify a sense of anticipation", with a "beat that buzzes and rolls somehow synesthetically", and the song was written "rhythm-first", with verses described as being sung "nearly rapped" for their cadence, speed, and relaxed vocal quality, over a "backdrop" that "thumps neatly" and "cooly [sic?]".

Rolling Stone described the soundscape and songwriting as "deceptively serene" with a "vortex of beats" amidst a "golden-colored and opaque" "sea" that included "vintage synth stabs recalling the timbral signature of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”, and "a rippling electronic phrase" following her line "the current is stronger" that "drives that point home", feeling that "It’s hard not to drown in it as she promises: 'No, you’re not going to get what you need/Baby, I have what you want/Come get your honey'" as "It’s an enticing promise but tastes more bitter than sweet, like a siren calling sailors to their death".

[25][26] Stylus' Alfred Soto made comparisons of its "aqueous beat" to "late nineties echos" of Madonna's Ray of Light (1998) and Sasha & Digweed, and the publication's Katharine St. Asaph felt it evoked "most obviously Róisín Murphy", before clarifying that it still sounded "like nothing else in the alt-pop world, which is a goddamn achievement.

Numerous critics praised the analogy insofar as the love she describes in the song could be "fleeting" like honey that escapes through your fingers, and/or be a substance that "sucks you in" like a hand in its jar or the early stages of a relationship you then realize too late is stuck.

[31][32] The song follows a familiar bittersweet songwriting template for Robyn of upbeat and/or uplifting production with sad lyrics, with its "show-stopping maelstrom of ethereal pulses and kicks" encapsulating Robyn's vision of "the inherent human need for contact, warmth, love and music; battling hard against the rocky shores of heartbreak," resembling honey's property as a "thicker, slower, and subtler version" of the "pop sugar" rush that came much more quickly from the songs in her Body Talk era.

[43] Atwood Magazine's Matthew Tordoff felt 'Honey' marked a "newer, more optimistic shift" in the "tone of Robyn's discography", noting the balance the song struck between its "overtly sexual", "sure, cocky challenge" to its subject and its "innocence", "vulnerab[ility]", and "honest[y]", praising the "deliberate" construction, "airy" vocals and verse "placement", as well as its "previously un-explored themes" and "different sound" which didn't "meander" but didn't "rush along, as you would expect from a stereotypical pop song, either" that had clearly "been in the works for a while".

[45] Highsnobiety's Douglas Greenwood called 'Honey' a "remarkable cut of potent, visceral club music" that "recklessly plays with intimacy, taking us to a desolate dance floor with each listen.