“I’ll Have to Go Away (Saying Goodbye)” is a soft, exhausted confession—when staying starts to feel like disappearing, and leaving becomes the only way to survive with your heart intact.
If you want the most truthful way to introduce David Cassidy’s “I’ll Have to Go Away (Saying Goodbye)”, it begins with a quiet correction: this song didn’t “arrive” as a chart-topping headline single, so it has no Billboard Hot 100 debut position of its own to pin to the wall. It arrived the slower, more intimate way—inside an album, as a deep-cut ballad that sounds like someone finally admitting what they’ve been trying not to say.
Cassidy recorded it for Gettin’ It in the Street (released in Germany and Japan in November 1976, with only a small U.S. pressing appearing later). The track is placed right up front—Track 2—as if the album wants you to meet its most vulnerable mood before it shows you anything else. The album itself was co-produced by David Cassidy and Gerry Beckley (of America), and it became Cassidy’s third and final RCA album release.
The song’s writers are crucial to its DNA: Renée Armand and Kerry Chater. Their names matter because they explain why this doesn’t feel like a manufactured “idol” ballad. It feels lived-in—more like a letter you hesitate to send than a performance designed to impress. The emotional landscape is urban and weary: the sense of being swallowed by a city that keeps moving even when you’ve stopped recognizing yourself in the mirror. Cassidy sings it not like a young heart dramatizing pain, but like a man trying to speak plainly because ornament would be dishonest.
There’s also a poignant history behind the song that makes Cassidy’s version feel like an echo of someone else’s lonely room. “I’ll Have to Go Away” was first released by Skylark in the early ’70s—appearing on their 1972 album Skylark. And Skylark’s recording didn’t disappear into obscurity: the band’s own chart history lists “I’ll Have to Go Away” as a charting single, reaching No. 83 in Canada and No. 106 in the U.S. (just outside the Hot 100), with additional Adult Contemporary placements. In other words, Cassidy wasn’t rescuing a random forgotten tune—he was choosing a song that already carried a faint public memory, then turning it into something more personal, more cinematic.
Cassidy’s recording gained its closest brush with “single life” via the record’s A-side: “Gettin’ It in the Street” was released as a single with “I’ll Have to Go Away (Saying Goodbye)” on the flip. That A-side didn’t crack the Hot 100, but it did appear at No. 105 on Billboard’s “Bubbling Under” chart—one of those near-misses that feel painfully appropriate for an album full of almost-there longing. In the UK, discography listings also show the pairing as a 7″ release, with the later title variation “Saying Goodbye Ain’t Easy (We’ll Have to Go Away)” appearing as another UK single issue the following year.
But charts don’t explain why the song hurts in the way it hurts.
What “I’ll Have to Go Away (Saying Goodbye)” understands—better than many breakup songs—is that sometimes the goodbye isn’t about romance at all. Sometimes it’s about location, identity, and the slow corrosion that happens when life becomes “dark and dirty,” when you’re tired in a deeper place than sleep can fix. (I’m paraphrasing the feeling here, not quoting it.) The narrator isn’t furious. He’s emptied out. He’s reached the moment where staying would mean continuing to vanish in plain sight.
That’s why Cassidy’s performance feels like an exhale that’s been trapped in the chest for months. He doesn’t sell you glamour. He offers you truth: loneliness that doesn’t announce itself, but shows up in the small humiliations—no one knowing your name, the sense of being unclaimed by the day. And in that truth, the title becomes the song’s sharpest mercy. Saying goodbye is not easy, yes—but not saying it can be worse. Leaving, here, isn’t a victory. It’s a form of self-preservation, a step taken before the heart goes numb enough to stop caring.
He recorded plenty of bright, radio-shaped moments across his career. But David Cassidy at his most affecting is often found in songs like this—where the voice isn’t trying to be “the star,” just trying to be understood. “I’ll Have to Go Away (Saying Goodbye)” remains a quiet testament to that side of him: reflective, bruised, and brave enough to admit that sometimes the only way forward is to turn around, walk out into the night, and finally tell the truth—softly, painfully, and in full.