The song was worked on for over six months, with each incarnation becoming bigger in sound and stranger in tone. In the initial draft of the song, what became the chorus was instead the verse and the song lacked a true chorus. There were "over 50 or so" tracks incorporated into the recording, and the song employs a recording technique that dates back to the 1960s, in which DeLonge sang into a rotating speaker to produce an "underwater" effect. The feedback in the middle of the song was created by tweaking and turning the guitar around "like an acrobat on drugs."
Music
The song is composed in the key of A major and is set in time signature of common time with a tempo of 92 beats per minute. DeLonge's vocal rangespans from E4 to D5. When sequenced as a part of the album, the song segues directly from the previous track, "Here's Your Letter", which relates to isolation, dislocation, loneliness and miscommunication. The song opens with the combination of an industrial loop with piano, which reminded Barker of the music of Pink Floyd or Failure. The narrative involves a lover pleading to his female companion to stay, and the song centrals around this refrain: "Are you afraid of being alone?/ 'Cause I am/ I'm lost without you." "Slow, deliberate, lumbering beats" mix with the guitars, which are tampered with a "space-age" feel. The song, which recalls the music of the 1980s, "undulates and builds round a mid-paced and somewhat wistful feel." Journalist Joe Shooman connects the song thematically to "I Miss You", in that both are downbeat in tone and relate to lost love. The piano returns for a "quiet middle-eight" before the narrativeends, and the song carries on with an extended drum solo that serves as the outro. The dueling drums—one mixed in the right channel and the other in the left—was something the band had always discussed, but had never implemented into a song. The first drum track was played to a click track, whereas the other one consisted of Barker "playing until I couldn't stop playing." The result is the longest song the band ever recorded, clocking in at 6:20. According to DeLonge, "the only way that you can really appreciate is if you have headphones and you dim the lights in your house and really sat there and listened to it."
Reception
singled out "I'm Lost Without You" as one of the "weirder, atmospheric pieces" on Blink-182, one that successfully molds "adventurous" songwriting with musical experimentation. The A.V. Club, however, referred to it as a "syrupy minor-key ballad."
