Musically, the song has been described as alternative rock, dance-punk, glam punk, anarcho-punk, screamo, and industrial rock. In a positive review by Spin magazine, Will Gottsegen calls "People" a "slick and noisy track with sharp, punchy riffs" and lyrics that discuss generational angst, specifically with the lyrics. Specifically, the lyrics discuss the concerns of climate change, capitalism, human extinction, and anxiety and described in the lyrics: "Well my generation wanna / fuck Barack Obama / Living in a sauna / with legal marijuana. Well girls, food, gear / I don’t like going outside / So bring me everything here."
Music video
The video, directed by Matt Healy, Warren Fu and Ben Ditto, features the band performing in a strobe-lit room with various glitching lights and visuals that reflect social media, memes, and catastrophic news. The band alternates between dark black suits and yellow suits. Quinn Moreland of Pitchfork described Matt Healy's performance in the music video as "channeling Marilyn Manson's oil-spill mane and Gerard Way's vein-bursting bravado."
Writing for Pitchfork, Quinn Moreland described the state of the band with this song saying that "if there's still any question about whether or not the 1975 is a rock band, rather than an '80s-indebted pop act, "People" will put that debate to rest." Moreland described the opening riffs in the song as desert rock. Moreland praised Healy's vocal performance "already undeniably one of the best and most elastic vocal performers of his generation, Healy has never sounded so ALIVE: barking, shrieking, and snarling, ripping his vocal cords to shreds as he rhymes 'Obama' with 'marijuana.'" Marissa Lorusso, writing for NPR, said that "People" thrashes with millennial anxiety with regards to climate change and human extinction. "With an as-of-yet unmatched level of gut-churning urgency; the song thrashes with all the big-guitar swagger of turn-of-the-millennium dance-punk." Derrick Rossignol of Uproxx said that with "People", The 1975 conclusively prove that they are a rock band: "if The 1975 only flirted with rock before, "People" is the band having lunch with rock's father and asking for permission to marry it". Thomas Smith, writing for NME praised the track and said that "People is a complete act of sabotage and rebellion. A push-back to the naysayers and the critics who dismiss them throwaway pop music, and an act of self-vandalisation to rip it up and start again. They want to start a revolution, man."
