It was released by Atlantic Records UK on 4 October 2023 as the third single from Blunt's seventh studio album, Who We Used to Be.
[1] "The Girl That Never Was" was written by Blunt, George Tizzard and Rick Parkhouse.
[2][3][4] On 27 October 2023, Blunt performed the song on the BBC's The One Show.
We had aspirations to start a family and...people in my situation have gone through that, you win some battles and you lose some [...] the ones that we have lost we struggle with a bit.
[7] On 20 October 2023, Blunt released a video showing an acoustic performance of "The Girl That Never Was".