"Go to Sleep" premiered on July 23, 2002 in Lisbon, Portugal. The song is notable for its time signature, which is 5/4. The alternate title for the song as listed on the track listing for the album is Little Man being Erased.

The guitar-work at the end of this track was achieved by Jonny Greenwood playing a sequence of random notes on his guitar that were being processed through a digital patch for software called Max/MSP, which is musical software frequently used by electronica or experimental artists. Some believe that even though this is a random process, what you hear on record sounds slightly more structured and therefore may have been edited in the production process. However, Greenwood has played this song live using the same patch on many occasions, most notably on Later...With Jools Holland where the patch seemed to generate a more frantic and random rendition of the unique solo.

A similar solo to that heard in live versions of "Go to Sleep" was played by Adrian Belew on the 1980 Talking Heads song "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)," though it was generated through different technology. Radiohead have cited the album Remain in Light on which the song appears as a major inspiration on their work in general.