Songfacts®:

• This Britpop classic deals with sexual roles and the freedom of sexual preference. Much of it is a send-up of the hedonistic club culture of the '90s, with a tongue-twisting chorus that blurs the lines of gender identity:
  
  Girls who are boys
  Who like boys to be girls
  Who do boys like they're girls
  Who do girls like they're boys
• Blur lead guitarist Graham Coxon called this song "a total laugh," with "lyrics about holidays and sex."
  
  It takes place on the sunny beaches of Greece, presumably somewhere like Mykonos, where young people from all over Europe go to party. There's some international flavor with the line in the second verse, "Du bist sehr schon," which is German for "You are very pretty." We can imagine a German lad on holiday trying his luck with that line.
• When Radiohead played a Maida Vale session for the BBC in 2003, their lead singer, Thom Yorke, was asked by an audience member if there were any songs he wished he had written. His answer: "Girls & Boys."
• Graham Coxon talked about "Girls & Boys" in NME May 11, 2013: "It's kind of typical of a song that you find funny and which audiences respond to. Mainly because there's nothing too complicated about it and it's got a chanty sort of chorus and it has these strange sexual connotations."
  
  He added: "We'd never been on Club 18-30 holidays or any of those things. We're writing about characters that you see and you make up stories about them; there's not a lot of first-hand experiences."
• Blur vocalist and lyricist Damon Albarn found his inspiration for the song while on holiday in Magaluf on the Spanish island of Majorca. "I just love the whole idea of it, to be honest. I love herds," he recalled. "All these blokes and all these girls meeting at the watering hole and then just copulating. There's no morality involved, I'm not saying it should or shouldn't happen."
• "Girls & Boys" was a big hit for Blur in their native UK; it was named single of the year by both NME and Melody Maker in 1994. Like their Britpop brethren Oasis, they had trouble finding an audience in America, which was more interested in Hootie & the Blowfish. The song stalled there at #59.
• Producer Stephen Street recalled the story of this song to NME: "Damon bought in their basic home demo, and he'd done. I hadn't been authorized to recall that one, but Damon played me it and I said, 'We gotta do that.' We used a drum machine and turned it into a 120bpm disco-type track, and it turned out really great."
• Pet Shop Boys provided a remix of the track for the single release. This wasn't just a throwaway rework - it became the definitive version across Europe. The influence went even further; when Blur hit the European promo trail, they found themselves lip-syncing to the Pet Shop Boys version on TV shows across the continent.
• The music video was directed by Kevin Godley, who was a member of the group 10cc ("I'm Not In Love") before going behind the lens to direct groundbreaking videos like "Every Breath You Take" and "Two Tribes," often with his partner Lol Creme.
  
  The "Girls & Boys" video is intentionally campy, with the band members composited in front of footage showing young people larking about on holiday.