"Breakin' Up", a track from LA alt-rock band Rilo Kiley's (Jenny Lewis, Blake Sennett, Pierre de Reeder, and Dave Rock) fourth album Under the Blacklight (2007) doesn't thread on the same melancholy, angst and agony that songs about heartbreak usually do (exhibit A: The Script's "Breakeven"). The song doesn't quite fit into the concept for the album, which AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine describes as "a sleazy crawl through L.A. nightlife, teaming with sex and tattered dreams, all illuminated by a dingy black light".
Intead, it's as accessible and pop-leaning as Rilo Kiley can get, although Lewis departs from the norm of the breakup genre by insisting that there isn't a point in hyperbolizing matters of the heart:
'It's not as if New York CityBurnt down to the groundOnce you drove awayIt's not as if the sun won't shineWhen clouds up aboveWash the blues away'
Source of lyrics:
The song would be too cold to function, of course, if Lewis maintained this line of reasong from beginning to end. There's some of the expected regret and disappointment ('Did my heart break enough?') in Lewis' personality-driven vocals, but the track is clearly set on eschewing the usual set-up of the woman being the damsel-in-emotional-distress and flips the formula by having the song's female persona clearly revelling in the prospect of embracing singlehood once again.
The song's outro, which consists of ample repetitions of the refrain 'Ooh, it feels good to be free', clearly sets it up to be the positive break-up anthem for countless summers. Who needs to wallow in a bucket of ice cream and a box of tissues when you can drive into the sunset as your radio blasts this chorus?
