According to Barry Eastmond, the song was inspired by an incident involving Ocean's single of the previous year, "Suddenly".

Eastmond told Fred Bronson in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits about a friend of his wife's who had recently broken up with a long-term boyfriend.

Eastmond and his co-writers used this scenario as the basis for writing "There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)".

Towards the end of the music video for "There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)", Ocean stands seeing a woman coming towards him and as he gets ready to hug her, but she walks past him, to his devastation.

An alternative video consists of Ocean performing the song live at one of his concerts in 1986.