"Silver Lining", the first 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) is arguably the alter-ego of "Breakin' Up". While the latter break-up song refuses to take the dissolution of the relationship too seriously, the former takes the time to excavate the difficult process of healing and moving on - while mourning the death of what might have been. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 27 on their list of the Top 100 Songs of 2007, noting that "Jenny Lewis and her bandmates are at their tuneful best, channeling Rumours and the pop-rock sensibility that may yet make them famous on this track about the dark and good things a breakup can bring."
The amount of depth Rilo Kiley creates with the use of two (metallic) metaphors is striking:
'And I was your silver liningAs the story goesI was your silver liningBut now I'm goldHooray hoorayI'm your silver liningHooray hoorayBut now I'm gold'
Source of lyrics:
The play on tenses is also part of the effect - the song is ostensibly about a break-up (I never felt so wicked/ As when I willed our love to die), and yet Lewis paradoxically claims that she's 'gold' (which suggests that they each put a ring on each other's finger). The song's lyrics might make more chronological sense if she 'was gold' and is 'now your silver lining', but perhaps this reversal is necessary to create that elusive sense of bittersweetness that seems to be the track's emotional core. This is Rilo Kiley at their upmost brilliance - managing such semantic complexity with simple, emphatic lyricism.
