Songfacts®:

• This love anthem was originally penned by Sara. Tegan recalled to Under The Radar that it was a song that she and producer Greg Kurstin "loved almost immediately, but we also didn't feel like it had a big enough chorus." She added: "All Greg did was change the chords underneath the chorus and all of a sudden it popped, it was insane. It was in my head for months after Sara wrote it."
• The song concerns those who avoid face-to-face interactions when breaking up. "'Goodbye, Goodbye' is a sound-off about rejection and the empowerment of shutting someone out after a breakup, but it's also an acknowledgment of the distorted nature of intimacy that comes from communicating complex emotions through a cell phone or email," Sara Quin told The Huffington Post. "In a way we learn more about ourselves than each other when we interact this way. Our phones and computers are just mirrors for us to reflect again and again."
• Sara Quin said in a track-by-track commentary: "I wanted to write a breakup song, but I wanted it to be the kind of breakup song where it's intimate. You're not angry at the person and you're not trying to get back together."