Produced by Fatboy Slim for his debut studio album Better Living Through Chemistry (1996), "Going Out of My Head" features guitar riff samples from American singer Yvonne Elliman's cover version of "I Can't Explain", originally performed by English rock band The Who.

[4] Jon Dolan of City Pages remarked that the song "transmogrif[ies] '64 mod into '97 postmod" with its looping of the "I Can't Explain" riff around a "space-funk tune".

John Harris of The Independent on Sunday praised the song's samples of "I Can't Explain" as "extremely artful",[7] while Mark Jenkins of The Washington Post cited it as the album's most effective tracks.

[8] Adam Webb of the Daily Herald published a rave review of "Going Out of My Head", writing that it "has the potential to be one of the first techno tracks to cross over into rock anthem territory.

[10] Fatboy Slim selected the song for release as a single at the insistence of his close friends, British electronic music duo The Chemical Brothers.

[19] Featuring various breakdancers performing a b-boy routine to the song,[20] the clip received heavy airplay on the MTV television network.