Songfacts®:

• This "messed-up love song" is from First & Foremost, the debut project from London-based singer-songwriter Phil Plested aka Plested. He said of the track: "You know that feeling you have when you know you shouldn't be doing something? When you're addicted but you shouldn't be and you're enjoying every moment of it. I guess, when you want something that's bad for you. That's what 'Habits' is. I write love songs and this is my messed-up love song."
• In a video about the making of "Habits," Plested explained how a circular saw was integral to the song's sound. He was working on the tune on the stairs outside the studio when he heard a noise he couldn't pinpoint. "As I was playing it, there was this weird sound in the air, and I thought it was just like atmosphere - it was in my head or something, I didn't know what it was. But then I stopped playing it was like [mimics high-pitched whine] sound going on. So I was like, I need to find out what that was. It turns out that these studios were being built and one guy had a circular saw going, and the circular saw for some unknown reason was in the key of E, somehow, so it worked perfectly. We've actually got it in the track. I think that's what makes it sound so dark and eerie and tense."
• On writing the lyrics: "I started with the verse and I wanted to have all the lyrics just kind of contradict each other, and I wanted the chorus to come down and just be super, super intimate and honest. So that's why in the track the first chorus is so stripped and there's nothing going on, basically."