After the enormous success with "Boys (Summertime Love)", the team around Sabrina's manager Menzione tried to score another international hit with a new single.

They chose "Hot Girl", a song from Sabrina's by-then-released first album, and had it remixed for the single release.

In his 2017 book Europe's Stars of '80s Dance Pop: 32 International Music Legends Discuss Their Careers, James Arena described "Hot Girl" as being the "retentlessly catchy follow-up single [after "Boys (Summertime Love)"], another electrifying, hook-laden dance jam", and underlined the remixed version by Phil Harding at PWL Studios which added "erotic vocal gasps and whipping sound effects set to a thunderous beat".

In Continental Europe, it was released in two times: first in the last two months of 1987 in the majority of European countries, then in the first half of 1988 in Spain and France; as a consequence, on the Pan-European Hot 100 Singles chart established by the Music & Media magazine, its 23-week chart trajectory is divided into two segments with a two-month hiatus, including a peak at number 36 in its second week.

[11] In Sabrina's home-country, Italy, it missed the top 20 by one place, peaking at number 21 for two weeks.