"[4] The album includes guitar contributions from Richard Lloyd, formerly of the band Television, and Robert Quine.

Michael Azerrad of Rolling Stone wrote of the sound: "Equal parts anguish and elation, the heavily autobiographical Girlfriend plays Sweet's impeccable pop sense of noisy, passionate guitar work, recalling the Beatles' Revolver, early Neil Young and Television.

On some tracks, notably "Divine Intervention," the drums were highly compressed and panned completely to one side of the stereo spectrum, in a move reminiscent of George Martin and the Beatles.

[citation needed] The tracks "Evangeline" and "Your Sweet Voice" were both followed by the sound of a vinyl outgroove and a phonograph needle lifting off a record, which was meant to signify the end of each side of the album as though it were an LP (thus making the final three songs on the album to be, conceptually, considered bonus tracks).

[citation needed] Released in October 1991, Girlfriend is Sweet's most commercially and critically successful album to date, with The A.V.

[21] In 2006, the album was remastered and released under the "Legacy Edition" label,[22] with three bonus tracks (originally released on the "Girlfriend" single, subtitled "the superdeformed CD", and also available on the Japanese version of the album), plus a second disc of home demos, live versions and session recordings called Goodfriend.

Subtitled "Another Take on 'Girlfriend'", Goodfriend was a promotional CD partly distributed through Sweet's fan club, and was not commercially released until the Legacy Edition.

Credit adapted from the original CD liner notesAll tracks are written by Matthew Sweet, except where notedMusicians (Disc 2) Legacy Edition