Songfacts®:

• Troye Sivan reflects on a failed relationship during this guitar-infused electro ballad. It was the same relationship that he was singing about on his debut album Blue Neighbourhood.
  
  I got the good side of things
  Travelled the universe twice
  So many thoughts I wanted to share
  But I didn't call because it wouldn't be fair
  
  Troye admits to his former lover he was at fault and apologizes for his wrong doings. He is sympathetic and admits he still "got the good side of things."
• Sivan explained the story behind the song during a Beats 1 interview with Zane Lowe:
  
  "This song's a little rough. It's basically about a breakup that I went through a while ago. You know, in a breakup, I think just the sheer nature of it, is that someone is going to get it rough. And I happened to be on the good side of things - I got to go on tour, I got to go and see the world, I had this very therapeutic experience of singing songs about that breakup and watching people sing them back to me, and I met someone new fairly soon afterwards. It's sort of a letter to that person to express apologies and sympathy and if I could change this at all, I would've. So I'm hoping that this song, a couple years down the line, is going to serve as a cathartic experience for the both of us to be like, 'look, this is the way that things happened and whenever we're ready to move on, let's do that.'"
• Troye Sivan told Genius about the day he wrote the song with Allie X, Bram Inscore, and his best friend Leland. "I was in my feelings that day about that particular situation," he said, referring to his feelings of guilt for going on tour and traveling the world in the midst of a breakup.
  
  "And because we're all so close, they knew the ins and outs of the entire situation and knew the complexities of the situation," Sivan continued. "We were just having this conversation about, 'Let's try to write a song about it, but let's genuinely vent.' Let's not try and make me the victim or anything like that, because that's not the way it went down. Let's write an honest song about how the cookie crumbled and how sh---y that is that it happened like that."
• Troye Sivan and the other songwriters wrote "The Good Side" about coming to terms with an older relationship. Co-writer Allie X told Billboard: "You always hear songs about having your heart broken and working through heartbreak, but you actually don't hear too many songs from the perspective of the person who got out of the relationship more easily. Oftentimes it's easier for one person. So, it's a unique perspective and I think we were really sensitive about the lyrics and what we said."
  
  Allie X added that they were listening to a Smiths song as a reference, as Troye had just got into the '80s English band.