 In an interview in 1993, Neil Tennant described "Being Boring" as "one of the best songs that we've written", and said that "For me it is a personal song because it's about a friend of mine who died of AIDS, and so it's about our lives when we were teenagers and how we moved to London, and I suppose me becoming successful and him becoming ill."

The track was originally pieced together in a studio in West Glasgow, where the music for "My October Symphony", "The End of the World" and the unreleased "Love and War" was also written.The track was also played in 1990–1991 Brazilian soap opera "Meu Bem, Meu Mal".The track was played in an episode of "Top Gear" from 2001, during the review of the Mazda 626.