Described by AllMusic as "at its core a campfire singalong", "Love Vigilantes" is decidedly pop and shows inspiration from American country and folk music.
[4] According to Bernard Sumner, "Love Vigilantes" is one of the few songs for which he started out wanting to tell a story rather than his usual method of listening to a newly composed piece and writing lyrics to match the mood of the music.
[5] Having "decided to write a redneck song", Sumner's lyrics tell a rather "tongue-in-cheek" tale of a soldier returning home from Vietnam only to find that his wife had received a telegram informing her that he had died.
[5] The subject of the song is close to the one of "Vietnam", the 1969 Jimmy Cliff standard covered by New Order in 2003 for War Child's Hope album.
[4] After an opening of four hits on a snare drum, the music is built around multiple hooks, starting with the intro theme, which Spin magazine called "Beatlesque",[7] played by Sumner on a melodica followed by his acoustic guitar riff which repeats throughout the song.