Songfacts®:

• This impassioned self-empowerment anthem finds Mabel searching for a boyfriend. She's looking for a "bad boy" who won't create drama and can handle her. However, the song is also about not needing a man on anything other than your own terms. Mabel said she wrote the song "to remind you all that wanting someone in your life doesn't mean you can't still be that bitch."
• Mabel wrote "Boyfriend" with Steve Mac and Camille Purcell, the same two songwriters she collaborated with for "Don't Call Me Up" and "Mad Love." Steve Mac also produced the track.
• The song samples the main hook of Blue Boy's 1997 UK hit 'Remember Me,' which in turn borrowed from '60s soul singer Marlena Shaw's 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival performance of "Woman of the Ghetto."
• Mabel's label released "Boyfriend" as a single on February 26, 2020. They retrospectively added it at the same time to the singer's High Expectations album.
• The song's futuristic video finds Mabel and her girls taking over a futuristic laboratory where they create her ideal boyfriend. According to Mabel, the choreography and looks was "'90s Aaliyah" inspired.