The song is about a bus driver who escapes Brixton, London for the tropical island of Barbados.

Morgan Studio engineers Jeffrey Calvert and Max West wrote this. Calvert had been on vacation in Jamaica, and they wanted to write a reggae song. They came up with this in two hours on a guitar and piano.

Since Calvert and West worked at Morgan studios, they were able to record it there after sessions for clients were over. They used backing tracks and instruments that were lying around the studio, but when Gull Records signed them, they rerecorded the song using top studio musicians, including guitarist Chris Spedding, The Tornados' drummer Clem Cattini, and Blue Mink's Roger Coulam on keyboards.

Jeff Calvert and Max West provided the vocals and the latter's alter ego Tobias Wilcock was also the hero of "Barbados," as the captain of the song's ubiquitous Coconut Airways.

The planned follow up was a Christmas novelty song, "The Ghost Song," which they had previously recorded for Mickie Most's RAK label, but had been released too late for the Christmas market. However plans to revitalize "The Ghost Song" came to nothing and Typically Tropical remain one-hit wonders to this day.

In September 1999 the song returned to #1 after the multinational group The Vengaboys re-worked the song with new words and title: "We're Going To Ibiza!"