Songfacts®:

• Cutting Crew lead singer Nick Van Eede wrote this song in Barbados, where he lived for four years with his family. He told us the story: "I lost my best friend and music partner Kevin MacMichael a few years back to cancer. I miss him in many different ways and when it came to writing the Grining Souls album the last thing I wanted and meant to do was write a song about him.
  
  Very briefly, my 7-year-old niece Daizie came to stay with me on the island and infuriated everybody by repeatedly singing a melody to her silly made up words. When she had flown home I went up to the studio and the song 'Silhouette' just tumbled forth and low and behold it was built around Daizie's tune. It's fitting that the song is quite Beatlesque as Kevin was such a huge fan of theirs. Where on earth the lyrics came from I have no idea but I think they stand up well (or at least many many fans have responded so well to them): 'You gotta laugh, or else you cry. You gotta live, at least to try. A cigarette, an empty chair. You were my friend, the best I had. And you played it all on an old guitar.'"