"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
Woke up sweating in the sun sprawled across my big brother's grave, shaking and drunk with sleep. I crawled to my feet and walked up into the shade of a young elm tree that must have been planted since the last we came. Vicki, my mom and me cleaned the dirt from the plaque that says his name. Walking to my girlfriends car, it came back down on me. Yeah, I guess I fell to my knees to keep from falling face-first into the dream. The vision that had had me twisting out under the afternoon sky. I didn't know it then but it was 13 years to the day he died. He held his hand in me, like brothers we walked through the colorless world of an alcohol dream. I talked for hours, trying to break through the silence that he held over me. Then he started away, turned his head. "Keep it up so you can die like me." Ever since my brother OD'd I have drifted all over from town to town to town. Every place I go it's always the same. I keep doing junk, I keep going down. My mama got religion and my sisters gave up. Man, I just gave up too. I just died inside. I don't wanna die like George. Everybody says there's things to see, everybody's pointing their fingers at me. I woke up driving after another blackout from another bad drug. I just can't shake this hell that I made for myself, for every other life I touch. I see my sister's son walk the line I walked, he's only sixteen. If he don't learn from my mistakes he's gonna waste away, he's gonna die like me.
Lyrics submitted by Lusyphur
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
Punchline
Ed Sheeran
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Ed Sheeran
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Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
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this is the best song they did. i can't believe how intense it can be at times.