It was co-produced and co-written by British songwriters and producers Paul Simm, Felix Howard, Jony Rockstar and Cameron McVey.

The general theme of the song involves a teenage girl's crush towards a boy and her finding the situation difficult to manage.

In August 2024, the Sugababes collaborated with A Little Sound on the single "Situation", which interpolates the chorus from "Overload", alongside new lyrics for verses.

[3] "Overload" was co-written by group members Keisha Buchanan, Mutya Buena, and Siobhán Donaghy, alongside Felix Howard and the song's co-producers Cameron McVey, Paul Simm and long-time Sugababes contributor Jony Rockstar.

The track fuses together styles of soul and hip-hop and features contributions of numerous instruments, including: drum, bass, keyboard, electric guitar and horns.

[7] According to the digital sheet music published by EMI, the song is written in the key of F♯ Phrygian dominant using common time, at a tempo of 125 beats per minute.

[9] Matthew Horton of Virgin Media noted that the song contains "huffling beats, honeyed vocals and surf guitar".

[14] The Observer's Kitty Empire called the song a "brilliant" hit with "unexpected class", and cited it as the starting point of the Sugababes' "course to stardom".

[28] The song managed to spend six weeks in the chart's top-ten, and was certified Gold by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie, denoting shipments of 250,000 copies of the single.

A Little Sound stated, "I was in a session with Billen Ted and incredible writer Katy Tiz when we realised the chord progression reminded us of something,” she recounts.

Katy and I wrote verses to complement the hook, and before we knew it, Sugababes really liked what we’d done and were keen to jump on it with us [...] It took one more studio session to get the girls' harmonies on top of the track, and then we were set for an official release.