Avril commented on the song’s background during an interview with PopMatters:

It was a song that we wanted to make universal, and a lot of the inspiration came having to leave someone that you love and all the little things you miss about them. The song’s gonna be the second single.

I just shot the video for it. I came up with the concept for the video: I wanted to have, like, a husband going off to war with his pregnant wife at home, and then I wanted like an old man who clearly had lost his wife and he goes to the gravestone to visit her, and then I wanted like a teenage couple who [had a] “weren’t allowed to be together” kinda thing, so like there’s all these different stories.

This video’s really pretty and it’s very personal. So it’s nice for me just talking about how I want it to make the record really fun and up-tempo. You know, I’d enjoy having a couple ballads so that I could really express my emotions and deliver emotion and just get … you know, I love to be able to sing a ballad every once in awhile—it just feels good.

“When You’re Gone” is the fifth track from Avril Lavigne’s third studio album “The Best Damn Thing”.