Songfacts®:

• The debut solo single by Fifth Harmony member Lauren Jauregui, "Expectations" is a soulful, slow-burner about relationship ambiguity. It finds her wishing for more respect from her significant other as that person does not appear to care about her as much as she does about them.
  
  Wish I had no expectations
  I wish that I could get it through your head
  With no confrontation
  I really wish we could talk about it instead
  
  Jauregui told Billboard at the 2018 American Music Awards that the seductive song is about finding a way out of this relationship uncertainty. "'Expectations' is an exploration of when you're in a relationship with someone and you don't want to have expectations," she said. "But they kind of get in the way, regardless, so it's about that."
• The smoky slow jam was inspired by an argument Jauregui had with her boyfriend Ty Dolla $ign over him working late one night. "Sometimes, when you're a little bit of a crazy b--ch and you've been working for a lot of hours, you just want to cuddle with your boyfriend - and they have to do work," she told Billboard in a separate interview. "He had an appearance he had to do at the club, and I didn't want to go to the club because I'm a grandma (not a club type). He said he was going to come home, so I waited up, expecting him to come home, and then I didn't get any answers for a while about where he was."
  
  The singer added that her boyfriend ended up hitting the studio with fellow musician Future that night and was unreachable, so she got angry. Jauregui was still fuming when she went into the studio the next day.
  "I purged the emotion in it," she revealed. "I got all of the feelings out in the song, and then I called him right after and I was like, 'Hey, I'm not mad anymore'. I realized it was total bulls--t, my bad... If I can get my emotions out in songs, instead of acting crazy, that's fantastic."
• Jauregui wrote "Expectations" in around half an in the studio in May 2018. She told iHeart Radio the song "just like came out of me… I had a feeling, I went into the studio, I wrote it and it was done."
• Jauregui premiered the track live in June 2018, when she was the opening act for Halsey's Hopeless Fountain Kingdom Tour in Latin America.
• The sensual beat is courtesy of Kid Harpoon. The English songwriter/producer's other credits include Florence + the Machine's "Shake It Out," Calvin Harris' "Sweet Nothing" and Foxes' "Let Go For Tonight."