Last Goodbye

Jeff Buckley wrote and sang "Last Goodbye," and it became his most commercially successful song in the US during his lifetime. The track appeared on his 1994 studio album Grace, where it followed the title song as the album's second single. In early 1995 it earned him a belated alternative hit, peaking at No. 19 on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, while in Australia it reached No. 88 on the ARIA Singles Chart.

The song had a long gestation under a different name. Originally titled "Unforgiven," it carried a more straightforward rock feel and instrumentation, and Buckley first recorded it at a demo session in 1990. A live version, still performed under the "Unforgiven" title, was captured in 1993 and later released on the posthumous 2003 album Live at Sin-é (Legacy Edition).

Buckley had spent a decade as a session guitarist in Los Angeles before drawing a following in the early 1990s at venues in the East Village of Manhattan, where he signed with Columbia. He toured extensively behind Grace, playing concerts across the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Australia. A music video for "Last Goodbye" showed Buckley and his band performing the song on a stage, with video projected onto them and the wall behind them. He died on May 29, 1997, drowning while swimming in the Wolf River in Memphis, Tennessee, while awaiting his band's arrival from New York.