Songfacts®:

• This is Harry Styles' critical take on those boyfriends who make lousy romantic partners. He condemns them for:
  
  Taking their girlfriends for granted
  Boozing on the quiet
  Being hard to comprehend
  Lack of manners
  Only calling when they want company
• Styles based the song on the behavior of other worthless boyfriends that he witnessed. "I grew up with a sister, so it's watching her date people and watching friends date people, and people don't treat each other very nicely sometimes," he told Apple Music. "It was one of those really quick, just say what you think of boyfriends."
• Styles wrote this with:
  
  His producers Tyler Johnson and Kid Harpoon.
  
  Tobias Jesso, a Vancouver singer-songwriter who co-wrote Adele's songs "When We Were Young " and "To Be Loved."
• Styles originally penned the song at the end of the sessions for his previous album, Fine Line. The pop star had just finished recording "Lights Up" and everyone had left, so he started writing "Boyfriends."
  
  Styles and his co-writers decided against rushing to get it done for Fine Line, feeling the need to take time on it. "There was something about it that was kind of one of those," Styles told Today hosts Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie and Carson Daly. "We could have rushed it to get it ready, and it just felt like there's something special about it and I wanted to kind of take my time with it. I knew that it would find its way onto the album. It was meant to be and I love the song."
• "Boyfriends" was the hardest song on Harry's House to get right. "We did so many versions of it, you know, it was as like, vocal and acoustic, and then vocal and this with that, you know, electric guitar and then this and then that," Styles told Apple Music. "We did the harmonies on everything and in the end it was like "Ok, we need, like, there's something that it has to be, to be what it should be."
• Ben Harper plays acoustic, electric and slide guitar on "Boyfriends." The singer-songwriter wanted to use the guitar that he wrote his first three albums on, but he'd given it to his daughter and had to ask for the instrument back. Harper didn't tell her what artist's album he was playing the guitar on, so it must have been quite some surprise for his daughter when she learned it was Harry's Game.
• The intro is the outro in reverse.
  
  Hoo
  Niaga ti ta kcab er'uoy, loof
  
  Fool, you're back at it again
  Ooh
• Styles debuted the song on April 15, 2022, during his Coachella headlining performance.
• Harry Styles performed "Boyfriends" for the 225th episode of The First Take. The Japanese YouTube channel invites singers to perform a song recorded in one take with no vocal or visual effects. Styles' appearance made him the first Western artist to feature on the channel.