Chris

In a track-by-track interview with Letissier, Pitchfork said the album "bounces from horny consumerism to melancholic machismo to stark vulnerability". It contrasted Chris with Letissier's debut album Chaleur humaine, saying that album's "warmth was slow-burning, Chris is red hot, sweaty, and insatiable". Letissier later elaborated: "The first album was born out of the frustration of being an aberration in society, because I was a young queer woman. The second was really born out of the aberration I was becoming, which was a powerful woman—being lustful and horny and sometimes angry, and craving for this will to just own everything a bit more and apologise a bit less." The Fader stated the album is "less starry-eyed than its predecessor", calling the lyrics more direct and sharp than before. It also claimed the album "explodes" Letissier's queer, feminist identity. Letissier named some of his references for the album were "immediate, catchy pop productions" by the likes of Cameo and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, also specifically naming Michael Jackson's Dangerous and Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope as influences. The track "Goya Soda" references the Spanish painter Francisco Goya.