Originally planned to be a double album, Shangri-La Dee Da contains thirteen tracks which range from heavy, distorted songs to psychedelic-inspired rock and acoustic ballads.

[6][7] Around the time of the album's release, vocalist Scott Weiland stated his belief that creating a double album would have been a way to "free ourselves from the habits we got into of making records in the past", adding that not having preconceived ideas about the outcome of the record would have allowed the band to "approach everything equally — not just the rock stuff, not just because the producer or the label or management think it's a hit.

[7][8] Rock photographer Chapman Baehler filmed a behind-the-scenes documentary as the band recorded the LP in their beach villa-turned-recording studio.

[10] However, drummer Eric Kretz called the period "the happiest five weeks of my life", saying the relationship between band members was "at its highest point in six years".

[12] In the liner notes, Weiland's wife and newborn son were credited as inspirations for a large portion of the album's songs.

[13] Weiland described the song's subject as an "assessment of my feelings coming straight out of jail and being hit with sensory overload and a lot of new insecurities.

[13] "Too Cool Queenie" tells a narrative of "a vindictive siren who prompts her musician-husband's suicide" which is widely thought to have been written about Courtney Love.

[10] The song sees the band experiment with unusual instrumentation, with Robert playing autoharp and Kretz contributing banjo.

[15][16] The closing track "Long Way Home" sees Weiland return to the lower, "guttural growling" vocal style of the band's early work.

"[26] Launch.com called it "another bombshell of an album", praising its "majestic" melodies, "muscular pop-metal" style, and the darker content of Weiland's lyrics.

[20] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine believed that while some of the harder rock tracks on the album (namely "Dumb Love" and "Hollywood Bitch") "do take hold", the highlights of the album are the poppier tracks, saying that "they're not just better on the pop tunes, they're phenomenal on the pop tunes.