A dance-rock song, "Perfect Illusion" lyrically delves on the singer's "highest of highs and lowest of lows" in a relationship, and is ultimately a commentary on social media.
Gaga wrote the lyrics using her Underwood typewriter; after numerous permutations the composers derived the final track. Speculation that the song referred to Gaga's ex-boyfriend Taylor Kinney was refuted by the singer.
"Perfect Illusion" is written in the key of F minor with a tempo of 125 beats per minute.
Hugh McIntyre from Forbes claimed "the track manages to simultaneously take Gaga in a different direction, while still maintaining some of the qualities that have made her so popular".
Mikael Wood from the Los Angeles Times called the song "a stomping disco-rock jam with a killer robot-Motown groove, buckets of scuzz-punk guitar fuzz and a key change designed to trigger Pavlovian fist-pumps".