"Bye Bye Beautiful" is the second track on Nightwish’s Dark Passion Play album. The song was confirmed to be the third single from Dark Passion Play by Tuomas Holopainen in an interview, but it was changed to the fourth single from the album after the announcement of Erämaan Viimeinen's release as the third.

A promo version of the track was leaked to the Internet on 11 July 2007. The full single was released on 15 February 2008 in three versions, CD, DVD and 12 inch. It includes an DJ Orkidea Remix Version of the song as well as a demo version of "The Poet and the Pendulum" and Dark Passion Play's Japanese bonus track "Escapist".

In the first part of the Dark Passion Play World Tour, "Bye Bye Beautiful" was the standard opening track, which was played after an intro of "Resurrection" from the soundtrack of The Passion of the Christ. In 2009 it was replaced by "7 Days to the Wolves" and Tuomas Holopainen stated that the band is never going to play "Bye Bye Beautiful" live again.

The vocals are shared between the band’s two vocalists, Anette Olzon and Marco Hietala. He performs the chorus and the bridge. In the studio version of the chorus he sings "Did you ever let in what the world said" and "Did we play to become only pawns in the game?", but in live sessions he sings "Oh, let in what the world said" and "Did we play - only pawns in the game?" respectively, adding pauses, probably for breathing in.

"Bye Bye Beautiful" is written by Tuomas Holopainen about the band's former vocalist, Tarja Turunen, who was dismissed from the band with an open letter in 2005, and his feelings before and after the time she changed her attitude towards the band and its music. This was at first rumoured among fans and later revealed by Holopainen in an interview. The chorus also contains the lyrics “Did you ever read what I wrote you?/ Did you ever listen to what we played?” in which the first part is a reference to the lyrics written by Holopainen, and the second part is about her lack of dedication to the music.

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Wikipedia