Songfacts®:

• Robbie penned this song shortly after becoming a father to daughter Teddy in September 2012. He told Magic FM: "'Go Gentle' is a promise I'm making to my daughter. It was written when she first arrived on the planet and I'd been a selfish popstar for most of my life and then all of a sudden I've been asked to take care of this whole person."
  
  "I still am scared that I'm not up to the task," Robbie continued, "I'm doing a good job of being dad but it's scary, you have to look after this person for the whole of their life, I'm not very good at even looking after me!"
• Williams penned this with his original songwriting partner, Guy Chambers. "It still gives me goosebumps when I hear it,' Chambers told The Daily Telegraph. "You don't often hear men talking like that in songs. Rob's very good at writing new types of songs about love that aren't conventional 'I Love You' songs. Go Gentle is very touching. The first time he sang it [for a Radio 4 special], he just cried; he was in pieces at the end."
• This was the first time Williams and Chambers had worked together on a full album since Williams and Chambers fell out while recording Escapology in Los Angeles in 2002 It is one of three songs on Swing Both Ways that were written by Williams and Chambers during a week in Los Angeles in January 2013 (the others being "Shine My Shoes" and "No One Likes a Fat Pop Star.") Williams recalled to The Sun: "We got to the studio at my house in Los Angeles and I'm sat on the sofa and Guy's on the piano. For 20 minutes in my head it was like 'Oh f---, this isn't going to work.' Then boom – we had 'Go Gentle' and then we went one after the other, very quickly. It was like old times."