So It Goes...
“Come here, dressed in black now”
Dressed in black, the lover shows up as something sleek and faintly dangerous, the dark clothing turning them into a figure of night-time allure.
“Gold cage, hostage to my feelings”
The gold cage is the trap dressed as a prize: the relationship looks precious from outside, but inside she is held captive by it. Gold here is beautiful and confining at once.
“I make all your gray days clear”
Grey days are the dull, low days the speaker offers to clear. The colour stands for the flat ordinary that being wanted lifts her out of.
“Trippin', trip, trippin' when you're gone”
Being apart is described as tripping, the lover's absence leaving her altered as if on a drug, longing turned into something close to a high.
“Getting caught up in a moment, lipstick on your face”
Evidentiary-residue register, the cosmetic transferred from speaker's mouth to addressee's face, the displaced colour standing as physical evidence of the kiss. The lipstick functions here as marker-of-intimacy left visible on another body, a register distinct from the speaker's own declarative-self application.
numbers and counting as wordplay
“You did a number on me But, honestly, baby, who's countin'?”
“We never painted by the numbers, baby But we were making it count” — the 1
Both songs play on numbers and counting. In the 1, painting by the numbers and making it count turn number words into a claim about meaning: what mattered was counted in the sense of counting for something. So It Goes... has the speaker say the other person did a number on them and then ask who is counting, professing indifference to keeping score, and a whispered count follows, which undercuts the pose. The earlier song counts as keeping score while claiming not to, and the 1 counts as mattering.
two-sided deception, one-sided exposure
“All eyes on you, my magician / All eyes on me, your illusionist”
“My best laid plan, your sleight of hand” — hoax
In the earlier song both lovers deceive, one a magician, the other an illusionist, and the trick is part of the attraction. In hoax the trick has fully played out: the speaker names the deception outright, in the word the title makes literal. Two-sided deception then, one-sided exposure now.
counting, playful then pointless
“But, honestly, baby, who's countin'?”
“You knew you won so what's the point of keeping score?” — hoax
In the earlier song the damage is counted out between them, playfully, a game both are still willing to play. By hoax the speaker asks what counting is even for once the other side has already won.