The lyrics are ambiguous and cover a variety of topics; lead vocalist Simon Le Bon described the album as "an adventure story about a little commando team".

[4][5] Capitol Records also reissued the band's 1981 self-titled debut album in the United States with an updated sleeve photo and replacing "To the Shore" with the new single to capitalise on its success.

And that really began a negative roll of publicity.Duran Duran escaped some of the large media hype surrounding them, which their photographer Denis O'Regan attributed to the château's relaxed atmosphere.

[2] At the château, the instruments were set up in a large empty room upstairs and wired to the recording equipment outside, forcing the musicians to travel back and forth in between takes to verify it was taping properly.

The producer gave the band a songwriting method he had learned working with Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry and Phil Manzanera, wherein he would create a groove using a programmed drum with effects on top.

"[2] Using the method, the group yielded what author Steve Malins called several "embryonic ideas", a demo of "Union of the Snake" and an unreleased track titled "Seven and the Ragged Tiger", parts of which evolved into "The Seventh Stranger".

[4] According to John Taylor, sketches of the tracks "Of Crime and Passion", "(I'm Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement", "I Take the Dice" and "Spidermouse", which became "New Moon on Monday", were devised during their time in France.

[2][14] The group encountered both personal and technical problems at AIR, such as tape machines that failed to run at the correct speeds;[4][13] the production crew were passed off as "whiny and unprofessional" when they complained to the local studio engineers.

[4][8] Additionally, keyboardist Nick Rhodes collapsed one day and had to be airlifted to a hospital in Miami, Florida after suffering from paroxysmal tachycardia, or an abnormally fast heartbeat.

[2] Le Bon, suffering from writer's block,[16] composed melody lines after listening back to the rhythm parts and wrote lyrics based on those later.

[2] Rhodes used a new Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesiser to help change the band's sound, as he wanted Seven to be a more "sophisticated pop album full of minutiae and multiple textures".

By the time the first single, "Union of the Snake", was being mixed, Rhodes and Sadkin only had 24 hours to write and record its B-side, "Secret Oktober", which Malins describes as a "moody electronic-carousel".

[10] Writing for AllMusic, Mike DeGagne found that the album's content has the band "moving ever so slightly into a danceclub arena", with "their ability to produce a sexier sound" favouring electronics and instrumentation over "a firm lyrical and musical partnership".

[4] AllMusic's Stewart Mason described the opening track, "The Reflex", as sounding like "an underwritten exercise in art-funk", drawing comparisons to Rio's "Hold Back the Rain".

[20] "New Moon on Monday" and "Union of the Snake" showcase the band's influences: the former echoes Roxy Music,[16] while the latter was based on the bass drum pattern for David Bowie's "Let's Dance" (1983).

[4][16] According to Malins, most of the tracks, particularly "Union of the Snake", "I Take the Dice", "Shadows on Your Side" and "(I'm Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement", portray a character in a "manic, slightly deranged state".

[4] In "Union of the Snake", the words visualise a dreamlike revolution led by music,[21] and "New Moon on Monday" presents a character's attempt to flatter a shy potential lover.

Sleeve designer Malcolm Garrett was flown in from the UK, as well as a live Bengal tiger from Melbourne to be pictured on both the album cover and upcoming tour programme.

[4][18] Malins finds the map suggests secrets that are waiting to be unfolded, offering a visual representation of Le Bon's "soul-searching on the album through [the] admittedly ambiguous lyrics".

[20] Elsewhere, Seven and the Ragged Tiger topped the charts in the Netherlands and New Zealand,[27][28] and it reached number two in Australia,[29] three in Finland,[27] seven in Canada,[27] 11 in Austria,[30] 12 in Italy,[31] 14 in Norway,[32] 16 in Switzerland,[33] 17 in Germany and 19 in Sweden.

[36][37] Its ambitious video, directed by Mulcahy's colleague Brian Grant, contained images of a medieval French town and was shot during a two-day shoot in Paris before the tour resumed in Japan.

[42] Ira Robbins was also negative in Trouser Press, describing Seven as "a harmless, useless mishmash of old riffs and weak songs" that represents a step backward from Rio.

[45] Among positive reviews, Melody Maker's Michael Oldfield found the album a bold move at this stage of the band's career, in which they solidify the 1980s dancefloor sound and simultaneously put an end to their "wimpish image".

[47] Billboard acknowledged a refinement in the style exhibited on prior works that equated to a "well-crafted set" that "yields fresh bursts of their now familiar choral sound, more playful eroticism and plenty of dance-oriented rhythmic momentum for their club fans", giving particular recognition to the production.

[48] Peter Martin of Smash Hits wrote: "The arrangements are watertight, the melodies are razor-sharp and every number is drenched with the mystique of a James Bond theme.

"[43] In a more mixed review, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice stated that "as public figures and maybe as people, these imperialist wimps are the most deplorable pop stars of the post-punk if not post-Presley era," calling the lyrics "obtuse at best," and said "if you'd sooner listen to a machine sing than Simon Le Bon, what are you going to do with both?"

In a retrospective review, DeGagne found Seven fails to match the "unrestrained pop/rock ebullience" of Rio with weaker songwriting, as well as favouring synthesisers over Andy Taylor's guitar stylings, but still displays strong singles and enough musicality to equal a "bright, energetic and effectual" record.

[38] The bassist felt Seven was anticlimactic after Rio,[23] writing: "Seven and the Ragged Tiger is a beautifully textured record, but it didn't hit you viscerally in the way the earlier albums had.

"[38] EMI re-released Seven and the Ragged Tiger in 2010 in two configurations: a two-disc digipak and a three-disc box set, featuring two CDs and one DVD, which included the first official release of the As the Lights Go Down video.

[61] Andy Taylor, who had left the band by that point,[62] criticised the remaster, saying that it "sounds like it was done down the pub" and condemned EMI for promoting the demos as bonus tracks: "They should be gifting them to fans after 30 years of support...shame on all involved".