Songfacts®:

• "Is This Goodbye" is the last song on Robert De Leo's first solo album, Lessons Learned. The album is a musical diary of sorts where he reflects on his past to get a better understanding of where he's headed.
  
  "These are universal feelings," he told Songfacts. "I don't think I'm writing anything new here. This is my interpretation of it. But I just wanted to end the album and it be a journey. We grew up on albums, not just singles and songs. I felt like that song completed the journey."
• This is the only song on the album that De Leo sang himself - he used various guest vocalists on the other tracks. De Leo is the bass player in Stone Temple Pilots, who have always had very dynamic singers. And although he's a bassist by trade, he loves to play guitar and other sting instruments. On this track he used some very unusual instruments, including a tabla, cigfiddle, guitarron, and Marxophone.
• The baleful tune is enhanced by the string section led by Dave Eggar on cello. "I wanted something at the end that led out, that felt like two people having a conversation, and I just love what he did on the end there," De Leo said. "The strings he did on this are beautiful. This song is just questioning what's happening with a relationship."