Songfacts®:

• American Idol champion David Cook released this song as the first single from his sophomore album. He co-penned the tune with the prolific songwriter and producer, Ryan Tedder and during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tedder explained why this is different to his old material: "I think a concern that anybody might have with working with me after 'Already Gone,' 'Apologize,' and 'Halo' is that I'm going to give them this huge sweeping ballad. Even on Adam (Lambert)'s last album, I gave him 'Sleepwalker,' but I'm kind of over that. I got sick of it about a year-and-a-half ago and stopped. David was, like, 'I want to do something uptempo,' so his first single, 'The Last Goodbye,' you would never know that I wrote it. It's really emotional and it hits you with the chorus about 40 seconds into the song, so it's just immediate."
• Tedder told The Hollywood Reporter how he found Cook as a co-writer: "More than any singer I've worked with, he contributed enormously lyrically and musically – he can play, he knows voicing, chords and arrangements as well as lyrics. He's a full-on writer. I love David, he's a great guy."
• The song's music video was directed by Nigel Dick (Britney Spears, Oasis, Nickelback) and shot in May 2011 in Malibu.
• The Nigel Dick directed video shows Cook heading to the beach to write this song. He explained to MTV News, "I'm actually absent-minded in real life. I commonly forget things. So [in the video my] wallet falls out of the pocket, and I end up leaving my stuff on the beach and then go back to the hotel to finish the song. Meanwhile, [a stranger finds] my stuff and thinks that I've drowned somehow. And hilarity ensues."
  
  In the original treatment Cook was in on the joke. He told MTV News: "I was like, 'Well, that seems a little self-important.' So we tried to swing it around and make it more like I'm just kind of dimwitted."
• During an interview with AINow.org Cook said there is no particular relationship that inspired the song. He added that the tune is about a combination of a few relative experiences.
• Cook told Billboard magazine: "The song itself was born out of this experiment I wanted to try. I've always loved those songs where you really get into the lyrics and realize that the musical vibe and the lyrical vibe don't necessarily match up, but somehow they coexist into this great song. I'd never written a song like that before."