This was recorded at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, Washington, four months after the band completed their Monster world tour. Like many other songs that would become part of the Hi-Fi album, this song debuted during the tour, but none of the guys remembered playing it until frontman Michael Stipe found a cassette of them performing it. "I remember writing it, but I don't remember showing it to anybody," Peter Buck recalled for the compilation Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage.
'"New Test Leper' might be the only song on this entire collection that wasn't actually, to my knowledge, released anywhere as a single," Stipe noted. "It is, however, the song I think of when people who wrote maybe four good songs get big heads [Brit pop anyone?]. I always feel like when they write a 'New Test Leper,' then I will listen to them."
