Reviewers thought the album effectively showcased Trainor's maturity and growth over her career as well as her musicality, but they were divided on whether it was a progression from her earlier work.

Meghan Trainor achieved commercial success with her debut major-label studio album, Title (2015),[2] which produced three top-10 singles on the US Billboard Hot 100.

[3] She struggled while creating her third album with Epic Records, Treat Myself (2020), and rewrote it four times in an attempt to respond to market shifts in the music industry after the preceding singles underperformed.

[9] Producers of Takin' It Back include Trainor and her brother Justin, Federico Vindver, Gian Stone, Teddy Geiger, Afterhrs, Rafa, Kid Harpoon, and Tyler Johnson.

[1][10] Stone, whom she had wished to work with since hearing his production on Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber's 2020 single "Stuck with U", produced four tracks for the standard edition of Takin' It Back.

[12] Her collaborators on previous albums would dismiss ideas she had conceived prior to sessions, but Trainor started the material worked on for Takin' It Back alone.

[5][12] Trainor believed her songwriting improved since having a caesarean section during the birth of her son, as she learned to love her body again after sustaining stretch marks and a scar.

[12] After songwriter Mozella told Trainor that other artists wished to emulate her signature doo-wop sound, they wrote the song "Don't I Make It Look Easy".

Trainor felt the song would delight listeners, reminiscent of her feelings after writing "Dear Future Husband" (2015), and she decided on Takin' It Back as the album title.

[12] She described the album's material as "big, powerful songs that mean a lot"; the subject matter revolves around her experiences with motherhood and embracing "not [being] perfect all the time".

[18] AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that Takin' It Back minimally employs electronic elements and comprises mainly old-timey but contemporarily presented tracks.

[20] "Made You Look" is a doo-wop song[21][22] that recalls earlier styles of popular music,[23] inspired by Trainor's body image insecurities after pregnancy and a challenge from her therapist to look at herself naked for five minutes.

[20] Piatkowski described it as "an achingly open and vulnerable poem about a woman trying to be everything to everyone", that dismisses typical narratives about women being "girlboss[es]" and acknowledges difficulties faced by them.

[1] On the 12th track, "While You're Young", she assures her adolescent self her dreams will come true and asks people who feel inadequate and face insecurities to learn through experience: "Make mistakes, give your heart a break.

[33] On June 22, 2022, Rolling Stone announced the album, titled Takin' It Back, would be released on October 21, 2022, and Trainor shared its official artwork on social media.

[18] Piatkowski felt that Takin' It Back reflected the confidence Trainor had gained from becoming a "major pop star" and believed it inaccurate to label it a retread of her debut record.

[20] Erlewine wrote that Takin' It Back was not necessarily a cutting-edge pop album, as Trainor's commitment to resurrecting Title's spirit "means that the attitude and melody can occasionally seem preserved in amber", but that overall it effectively demonstrated her gift for hooks and musical theater flair.