Commercially, "When You're Gone" reached the top 10 in Austria, Australia, Canada, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom; and peaked at number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song may have been inspired by Lavigne's then-husband, Deryck Whibley, although in an interview in Northern Ireland with The Belfast Telegraph she did not confirm this.

[4] Composer Rob Mathes orchestrated the song with genuine string section, although the brief opening note, before the piano came in, was on a synthesizer.

In the Continental Europe, "When You're Gone" peaked inside top twenty in countries such as Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

However, the song was a minor hit in Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia), where it failed to reach top twenty.

After his departure, she watches news of war casualties on the television and is distraught when she is not receive any texts from her husband telling her how he is doing.

The third involves a teenage couple relaxing in the park together only to be caught by the girl's controlling mother who forbids them from seeing each other ever again.

The mother locks her daughter in her bedroom, where the girl helplessly cries over the photos of her and her boyfriend on her camera.

In the end, the walls of all the respective houses collapse, and all three vignettes break out into daylight with the teenage girl returning to the place where the duo were caught despite his absence, the elderly man raising a toast to his wife in a graveyard, and the pregnant woman attending a military memorial service with other military wives, where she finally receives a text from her husband saying: "I'm okay.

The song was used in the second-season finale of the MTV show The Hills, playing during the climatic "moving out" scene between former best friends Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag.

The song is used as the background music for the third generation Toyota Alphard commercial for the Japanese market, with Kate Winslet and Selena Gomez.