"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.
I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons
If it gets through to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Of picture postcard charms
Oh, Amelia, it was just a false alarm
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But 'til you get there yourself
You never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Others just come to harm
Oh, Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm
A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea, like me, she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
Maybe I've never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons
If it gets through to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Of picture postcard charms
Oh, Amelia, it was just a false alarm
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But 'til you get there yourself
You never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Others just come to harm
Oh, Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm
A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea, like me, she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
Maybe I've never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Mental Istid
Ebba Grön
Ebba Grön
This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
Mountain Song
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
One of her best songs ever. Killer lyrics. I think she's talking about love, more specifically, the loss of the greatest love of her life. She's telling herself that it was just a false alarm - or she's simply saying that all her loves were just false alarms.
ANd Joni does compare her life to Amelia. Her dream to "fly" was her dream to love. SHe's talking to Amelia, perhaps in her loneliness, and telling the mythical pilot of her own wonderlust. She flew too high trying to get it and crashed into his arms. Perhaps her life on the road caused the problems.
I think that these lyrics are incredible. My interpretation resembles somewhat of the interpretation that threearmedman had. I feel that he was right on. And to add, aside from her comparison with Amelia Earheart, it shows Joni's innter conflict of wanting to be independant and a lone traveler, but also craving love and companionship. Amelia is the symbol of the lone traveler, but while joni was "looking down on everything" from Amelia's view she "crashed into his arms."
Most people have forgotten a key component to this poem/song. The song features a reference to Icarus, a classical Greek myth that exemplifies the Greek conception of the middle way. Like Amelia, and Joni, Icarus was too ambitious and fell from the heavens to the sea. What this implies is that every love Mitchell has had is not accomplished, due to her overreaching. Te song ends on a very pessimistic note, with love being compared to "dreams and false alarms". This means that each love the speaker has had was synonymous with impossibilities and falsehoods (as the "false alarm" image relates to Earhart's rescuers never actually rescuing her). Hence, the speaker's search for love is basically a false alarm. She can't be save from crashing into the sea.
While in some ways yes, this IS an ode to Amelia Earhart... It is more of a comparison between Joni and Amelia.
"Like me, she had a dream to fly."
I think what Joni is trying to portray in this song is the common sense of needing to escape... To remove yourself from your own existense in order to find yourself.
Amelia never returned from this journey. And Joni, apparently did. "It was just a false alarm."
I found this on songfacts.com: "Mitchell (from a 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Times): 'I wrote the album while traveling cross-country by myself and there is this restless feeling throughout it... the sweet loneliness of solitary travel. In this song, I was thinking of Amelia Earhart and addressing it from one solo pilot to another, sort of reflecting on the cost of being a woman and having something you must do.' "
I believe this sad and wonderful piece is about the stark and difficult choice many of us face in our lives between our life's work and our life's love. The reference to the guitar in the first verse goes to the discovery of her muse, and the second verse is about the exhilaration of success. I have experienced both, and its eerie how her choice of words strikes directly at my heart.
By the third verse she has begun to understand the sacrifice she has made, and in the fourth crystallizes that sacrifice in her words of hard lost love and the pain that goes with that loss. I find it interesting that in this verse and only this verse she addresses Amelia not in the first person (as a confidant), but in the third person in a much more clinical way (“I tell Amelia”).
A ghost of aviation, swallowed by the sky…she has lost her way in her devotion to her career. These verses are all about the wreckage of her life, as a consequence of her own choices. And then that lovely last refrain, in which she speaks of resignation to her lonely life of dreams (twice, in case you missed it the first time) and false alarms.
She is traveling to escape the pain of the failed relation - "So this is how I hide the hurt As the road leads cursed and charmed." As soulrevue points out - these are tough choices between pursuing our dreams or pursuing love. But which is the false alarm? The failed relationship (e.g. verse 4)? or Our pursuing the dreams that end in death (like Earhart and Icarus)?
It is significant that in the last verse she check into the "Cactus Tree" Motel. This is a reference to her early song "Cactus Tree" in which she recites a list of all the men who love her, but... "her heart is full and hollow, Like a cactus tree - While she's so busy being free." This reference comes straight on the heels of the previous verse in which she muses "Maybe I've never really loved - I guess that is the truth. I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude." So she is wondering if all of her supposed loves have been false alarms. That she has spent her life "busy being free... at icy altitudes." The freedom of flight being the quintessential symbol of freedom, and "falling into" someone's arms is not the same as actually loving them. Of course, spending her life in clouds hearkens back to her first, most famous song, "Clouds" that she really doesn't know at all.
an ode to amelia earhart, american aviator who disappeared in the 30s
We can clearly draw a parallel between the struggles of Amelia Earhart and the feminist movement. The tragic ending of Amelia's final journey solidifies the deeply infused misogamy of the concept of being free. Woman are exempt from this notion, perhaps she stopped for directions (in the ocean?) hence her death.