friend and background singer Trey Lorenz also took part in the song's production. He provided the back-up vocals in the song, and took part in several small areas of the development of Rainbow. When interviewed by Bronson, Carey spoke highly of Lorenz, "He's an amazing writer and singer, he's so influenced by the old school stuff, yet he's so current. He's known me since before my first album, and he's a great, loyal friend." Aside from the use of the sample and Jay-Z's verses, "Heartbreaker" contains strong female-empowering lyrics, which Carey wrote as a sort of anthem, especially because she felt that she personally has been in a similar predicament in the past. Composition "Heartbreaker" is a moderately slow, mid-tempo pop, hip hop/R&B track. According to the music sheet published at Musicnotes.com, the song is written in the key of D♭ major, while the beat is set in common time which moves at a moderate pace of 100 beats per minute. It has a sequence of D–Bm–D as its chord progression. Carey's vocals in the song span from the note of D3 to the high note of C7. The song has a "percolating beat" over which Carey sings with nasal, silken and declarative vocals. The verses feature Carey's signature melismatic style, combined with rapid yet seamless transitions; for example, Carey starts the second verse already in mid-belt "It's a shame to be" while then going off into a whispering coo for "so euphoric and weak." Aside from background vocal stylings from Lorenz and other women, Carey added her own lowered vocals into the song, giving the impression of a "doubled voice." "Heartbreaker" samples the 1982 song "Attack of the Name Game" by Stacy Lattisaw. The song's hook and loop were taken and incorporated into the melody of "Heartbreaker", as well as being used as its main instrumental components. The lyrics are constructed in the verse-pre-chorus-chorus form. Carey starts with the hook "Gimme your love, gimme your love," repeated eight times. Carey repeats the chorus four times, ending the song with a final "Gimme your love, gimme your love." Chuck Taylor from Billboard described its instrumentation as a "persistent guitar lick" and wrote "There's an identifiable chorus here, and some semblance of verses, but more than anything, this song comes across as a blur of jumbled in the background, including Carey's own repetitive harmonies, which in this case sound more like