Recording for the album began during early 1997, with the sessions taking place in Vancouver, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

[1][6] The Vancouver branch of Universal prioritized her as one of their main artists for the summer of 1997, and sent out the single "Numb" to radio stations in mid-June 1997, ahead of the album's release later that month.

Morrissette had experienced huge success in 1995 through her album Jagged Little Pill, with McNarland saying "there's a lot of female artists out there that are being targeted for that.

"[1] In another interview from July 1997, McNarland said that she liked other female singer-songwriters such as Sarah McLachlan and Sinéad O'Connor, but wasn't a fan of Morissette's music.

Derek Summers, a director of marketing at the U.S. branch of Universal, told Billboard in 1997 that they did this since "we wanted the record to be heard on its own without the hype of 'another angry, young female artist' type of thing.

They compared her voice to Sarah McLachlan and wrote "on Stuff, McNarland shows herself to be a contemporary commercial commodity with huge cross-over possibilities, despite her penchant to give the attending world a hearty middle finger.

"[2] In September 1997, Billboard called it a "bruising rock album displaying the shimmering, soaring voice of this remarkable 23 year old Canadian.

"[7] In his retrospective review for AllMusic, Alex Henderson wrote "with Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple burning up the charts, the mid- to late 1990s were more than friendly to angst-ridden female rockers.

One of the most compelling 'angry young woman' releases of 1997 was Holly McNarland's Stuff, which gives the impression that the Canadian singer/songwriter lives and breathes dysfunction.