In 1996, Perry told Dick Clark:

I don’t know where it came from, just the words: “Oh Sherrie” came out and the “Hold on, hold on”. That’s all we had for the entire chorus. We had no lyrics, no nothing. We had a bunch of mumbles on tape, certain vowel sounds and things, but that sort of started the whole idea. And next thing I know the song was almost finishing itself because it was such a personal song. I really needed someone with great lyric insight like Randy Goodrem had and he helped me finish the lyrics on it.

Co-writer Randy Goodrum told Songfacts:

I’d gotten to know him and Sherrie, not really well, but I had a general idea of what they were like as people. I sensed a certain amount of drama in their relationship, to put it mildly. I like to find a premise and go with that, rather than a hook. And as long as I know what the point of the song, or the mission of the song is, then the lyrics usually just fall into place. So I focused in on that, it was me saying, ‘Here is a relationship the way I perceive it between two people.’ And when Steve gave me a scratch tape that had him singing what I call a ‘la-la’ track, which is when the singer just sort of sings nonsense, and non-words, I listened to his vocals, and listened to some of the vowels that sounded good on high notes, and some of the ones that sounded good in the middle. That’s another little trade secret that I do when I get a scratch vocal. And I fashioned the lyrics around their relationship. And then, of course, I took it back to Steve, and showed him what I’d done. We made changes and tweaks here and there, and it ended up being the basic lyrics for ‘Oh Sherrie.’