Like most Wham! songs, this was written by George Michael. He told ASCAP in Action in 1985: "It's the only song I've written that successfully came from a backing track first." He went on to explain that he wrote the drum pattern and found a synthesizer that he liked one night, and then the following morning he wrote the vocal part in his hotel room. "Because it was thrown together that way, I never looked at it as a single 'til everybody started saying it was great," said Michael.
Wham! was known for lightweight pop, but this song has a serious theme, which foreshadowed George Michael's solo work. He explained the meaning of the song to Dick Clark on his syndicated radio countdown show. Said Michael: "It's a lyric about a man who is six or eight months into a marriage which obviously isn't going well. He's faced with the 'happy' news of an arriving baby. So he's in that situation where he can't back out. (The song) talks about the situation (in which) many men find themselves, working really hard to support a family… and see it as a kind of trap. It's a situation I've seen. It's not the kind of thing I usually write about. Our lyrics are usually a lot closer to the kind of pop lightweight lyric we enjoy, but it's a departure, and I think it worked."
When this song topped the Hot 100, Wham! became the first group since the Bee Gees to have three #1 singles from the same album. "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" and "Careless Whisper" were the previous chart-toppers from Make It Big.
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