Songfacts®:

• The first single from Michaelson's Lights Out album concerns courtship patterns. Michaelson explained on her Facebook page: "'Girls Chase Boys' started out as a breakup song but took on a deeper meaning as I continued writing. More than just being about my experience, its focus shifted to include the idea that, no matter who or how we love, we are all the same."
• The song's music video was filmed by actor and director Andrew Elvis Miller and is a gender reversing homage to Robert Palmer's 1988 clip for "Simply Irresistible." Michaelson said the visual, "attempts to turn stereotypical gender roles on their head. Girls don't exclusively chase boys, we all know this. We all chase each other and in the end we are all chasing after the same thing: love."
• Ingrid Michaelson wrote the song with Barry Dean (Little Big Town's "Pontoon") and Trent Dabbs, who has also penned several songs that have been on ABC's Nashville. Dean recalled the story of the song to American Songwriter magazine: "We were working on an initial idea – a ballad – and it just kind of stalled."
  
  "We decided to look around for a minute at other ideas. Trent had that little beat you hear in the beginning of the song and I added a little piano riff in. I had the phrase, 'Girls chase boys, chase girls' but didn't know what to do with it…but Ingrid and Trent did!"
• The "ohh" vocal phrase in the chorus came from Michaelson playing around with her voice, trying to find the melody. Dean said: "I didn't feel like we had to find words there, we could just enjoy her voice. Ingrid's voice is like a Formula One car – it can go to all these wonderful places."