Belgian-born Wally De Backer is an indie rock singer-songwriter who records under the name of Gotye. He moved with his family to Australia at the age of 2 and has been releasing music there since 2001. De Backer achieved a breakthrough with his second album Like Drawing Blood, which was voted # in the Triple J listeners poll of the Best Album of 2006. This is the second single from De Backer's third album, Making Mirrors. The LP was released in the summer of 2011 and went to #1 in Australia.

The song features New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra, who won her country's Critics' Choice awards in 2011; the award is intended to recognize and nurture up-coming talent. Gotye didn't begin writing this song as a duet, but after he finished the first verse, he realized he had nowhere to go with the character he was writing about, and needed to introduce another voice.

"Somebody" was both produced and written by Gotye in his parents' barn on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne. It finds Gotye addressing a past lover, reminiscing about their relationship and break-up. The song draws from the aftermath and memory of several relationships, but he told Rolling Stone Australia that one does resound louder than the others. "There is an ex-girlfriend I know." he admitted. "It was five-six years ago. It wasn't a nasty breakup, but it was messy in the sense that we hurt each other more than we needed to because it wasn't a clean break. I guess it's closest to what the chorus is about. We both realized we had to move on and we haven't seen each other since."