Produced, like its predecessor, by Ed Stasium, Blow Up features songwriting collaborations with Diane Warren ("Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing") and Julian Lennon on two of the album's most accessible tracks.

Blow Up was released the same month as Nirvana's Nevermind, an album that would quickly have a huge impact on alternative radio formats, "squeezing out largely pop-oriented bands like the Smithereens," according to Damas.

The ballad "Evening Dress" is lyrically inspired by a short story by the Japanese author Yukio Mishima, and "Indigo Blues" is a R&B song on which Los Lobos's Steve Berlin guests as a "one-man sax section."

Co-written with Dianne Warren, "Get a Hold of My Heart" features harmony vocals by Carlene Carter, and, according to DiNizio, "Tell Me When Did Things Go So Wrong" is the band's first overtly political song about "what I feel society has turned into."

[7][8] Dubois Daniels, writing for OffBeat magazine, wrote that the Smithereens "retain their combination of pop vocal melodies over big crunchy guitars, but add keyboards and strings on most of the cuts."

"[6] Rolling Stone's Wayne King wrote, "For those who'd shrug [the Smithereens] off as hopelessly retro, the group makes moves like inviting the Cowsills to sing backup on one song from Blow Up, a gesture either so warped it's cool or just plain pathetic.