Songfacts®:

• The Big Pink is an English electro-rock duo. The pair comprises multi-instrumentalists Robbie Furze, who is a former guitarist with electro-punk singer Alec Empire and Milo Cordell, who is the son of 1960s pop producer Denny and runs the Merok label, which has released early noise rock releases by Klaxons and Crystal Castles. This is the first single from their second album Future This. The song was released on November 8, 2011.
• The song title is a phrase meaning "keep true to yourself" or "preserve your innocence," which was originally used in Robert Frost's 1923 poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay. It pops up in SE Hinton's novel of youthful alienation The Outsiders, when "stay gold" is uttered by the dying gang member Johnny Cade to Ponyboy Curtis and is also the title of the soundtrack's main theme, sung by Stevie Wonder.
• Cordell explained the song's meaning to NME: "The song's about fighting your way out of a negative space."
  
  "When you're growing up," added Furze, "you can fall into quite a dark place and, although it sounds like a big cliché, music really does save you at certain points. That's what we wanted to celebrate."
• The Big Pink commissioned Sri Lankan Hip-Hop record producer Araabmuzik to do a remix, which features a druggy verse by rapper Danny Brown. "I've always been into Hip-Hop really," Cordell told Billboard magazine. "Rob and I always bonded over Hip-Hop and Weezer."
• Those of you of a certain vintage will recall Milo Cordell's father, Denny, who was a successful producer in the 1960s and early '70s. His resume included a number of big hits including Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" and Joe Cocker's "With A Little Help From My Friends."