A Japanese special edition included a bonus mini CD, exclusive artwork and printed lyrics in a white velvet-like box.
In places, the album expands upon the synth-pop genre with flavours of guitar pop ballads, as with "This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave" and "My October Symphony" (a song about the decline of the Soviet Union) with the guitarist Johnny Marr; Marr and Neil Tennant previously worked together on the 1989 Electronic song "Getting Away with It".
[3] In a 1993 interview with NME, Chris Lowe recalled of Behaviour, "The funny thing was that album was written at a time when the whole rave scene was fantastically exciting and good, the music was really up.
The videos for both songs were directed by Liam Kan, which drew on iconography from the Pet Shop Boys' then current tour with Tennant spoofing several 'rock' stars including U2, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Presley and George Michael.
The B-side was the Pet Shop Boys' tidied-up demo version of "Losing My Mind", which they produced for Liza Minnelli in 1989 for her album Results.
Reviewing Behaviour for Entertainment Weekly, Jim Farber commented that the album contained the Pet Shop Boys' "best tunes yet" and "their most consistently beautiful melodies to date", noting "an easier way with the beats and greater vulnerability in the lyrics" compared to the duo's earlier material.
[7] Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune wrote that Behaviour "may strike some listeners as even wimpier and blander than earlier releases, but its subtle brilliance emerges with repeated plays", calling it "a record that'll seduce dance clubs for a few months, and haunt the stay-at-home crowd for long after".
[6] "Some of their dance fans may be a trifle disappointed," wrote Mark Cooper for Q, "but the best ballads here are as wry and touching as vintage Broadway.
[15] Robert Christgau selected "Being Boring" and "My October Symphony" as highlights in his Village Voice "Consumer Guide" column;[16] he later gave the album a "two-star honorable mention" grade,[17] indicating a "likable effort that consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well enjoy".
[18] In a mixed review, NME's Roger Morton conceded that Behaviour "is probably no more a disconsolate record than Introspective or Actually", but questioned its relative lack of "a defiant surge of rhythm".
[9] Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times found that the album reaches "the emotional peaks" of the Pet Shop Boys' previous work on "peppy highlights" such as "So Hard" and "The End of the World", while "the occasional lapses and the forays into slower tempos" feel "flat by comparison".
[24] Pet Shop Boys Additional musicians Technical Artwork Credits adapted from the liner notes of Introspective/Further Listening 1990–1991.