Songfacts®:

• Paul Williams wrote this with Nashville songwriter Jon Vezner, whose credits include "Where You've Been" for Kathy Mattea and "If I Didn't Love You" by Steve Wariner. Williams is a singer, songwriter and actor who recovered from drug and alcohol dependency in 1990 and has worked to bring awareness to the problem and help others. In our interview with Williams, he said of this song: "It poured out of us at the same time. There's a subject matter in that song that is specific to my life. There was a young lady that said, 'I'm not going to be with you, because you're an alcoholic and addict. I don't want to watch you die.' And she wound up leaving, but I wound up getting sober. And that's really the content of that song. 'You're Gone,' is related specifically to one of my own life events: 'The good news is I'm better for the time we spent together. The bad news is you're gone.' Garth Brooks recorded that. He hasn't released it yet. It's tucked away in a vault, but I hope he'll release it some day. Come on, Garth."