The Academy Is... lead singer William Beckett didn't write the song about one girl in particular. "It's a sarcastic song, not incredibly, but, in certain ways, about not wanting someone to know the way that you feel about them," he told Rolling Stone. "It's about having a crush on a girl and not wanting her to know how you feel about her." Beckett said he watched a lot of John Hughes films in preparation for recording the album Fast Times at Barrington High and its first single "About a Girl," which exemplified the album's theme of the "celebration of youth and the importance of the present."