"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.
We ain't going to the party
We ain't going to the game
We ain't going to the disco
Ain't gonna cruise down Main
We're stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
On a Friday night
Drivin' in the mountains
Winding 'round and 'round
Rummage through your mailboxes
Take your mail back to town
And we got license plates, wedding gifts, tax returns
Checks to politicians from real estate firms
Money, bills and cancelled checks
Pretty funny pictures of your kids
We're gonna steal your mail
On a Friday night
We're gonna steal your mail
By the pale moonlight
We got grocery sackful after grocery sackful
After grocery sackful after grocery sackful
After grocery sackful after grocery sackful
Of the private lives of you
People say that we're crazy
We're sick and all alone
But when we read your letters
We're rolling on the floor
And we got license plates, wedding gifts, tax returns
Checks to politicians from real estate firms
Money, bills and cancelled checks
We cut relationships with your friends
We're gonna steal your mail
On a Friday night
We're gonna steal your mail
By the pale moonlight
We better not get caught
We'll be dumped in institutions
Where we'll be drugged and shocked
Till we come out born-again Christians
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
On a Friday night, n-n-n-night
We ain't going to the game
We ain't going to the disco
Ain't gonna cruise down Main
We're stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
On a Friday night
Drivin' in the mountains
Winding 'round and 'round
Rummage through your mailboxes
Take your mail back to town
And we got license plates, wedding gifts, tax returns
Checks to politicians from real estate firms
Money, bills and cancelled checks
Pretty funny pictures of your kids
We're gonna steal your mail
On a Friday night
We're gonna steal your mail
By the pale moonlight
We got grocery sackful after grocery sackful
After grocery sackful after grocery sackful
After grocery sackful after grocery sackful
Of the private lives of you
People say that we're crazy
We're sick and all alone
But when we read your letters
We're rolling on the floor
And we got license plates, wedding gifts, tax returns
Checks to politicians from real estate firms
Money, bills and cancelled checks
We cut relationships with your friends
We're gonna steal your mail
On a Friday night
We're gonna steal your mail
By the pale moonlight
We better not get caught
We'll be dumped in institutions
Where we'll be drugged and shocked
Till we come out born-again Christians
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
Stealing people's mail
On a Friday night, n-n-n-night
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More Featured Meanings
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"
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."
Magical
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
How would you describe the feeling of being in love? For Ed Sheeran, the word is “Magical.” in HIS three-minute album opener, he makes an attempt to capture the beauty and delicacy of true love with words. He describes the magic of it all over a bright Pop song produced by Aaron Dessner.
Blue
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. He expresses the realization that he might never find another on this stringed instrumental by Aaron Dessner.
...No, stealing people's mail does not creat total anarchy. It just annoys people; how is pissing people off a stroke of genius? And you'd not really be 'undermining the institute' by stealing mail; these are normal people that you're stealing from, and the government isn't hurt. Dead Kennedys' satire is one of the things I really like about them.
Oh and I also think the song is about how there is nothing creative to do in small towns
This song could easily be applied today with the NSA stealing our private information (emails).
wow, no responses yet?
This song is pretty cool, the whole sarcastic thing, kinda like the Offspring's Beheaded in a way... I mean, he's not serious, he's more poking fun @ the people that do shit like that... or so that's how I interpret the song. Seems like their style is more to poke fun @ other people to make statements, not make their statements by saying their own stuff... get my drift? I'm not wording this as well as I'd like to be able to.
I dont think this song is written in a sarcastic way...
It might be about how people stake a lot of their lives in their mail...
"We cut relationships with your friends"
"Pretty funny pictures of your kids"
etc.
My neighbors mail is mostley ads but they have some nice greeting cards.
MountainJew was right, I think. It's about how people put way, way too much of their private lives and important things in the mail system.
I always found it weird how Americans would just leave all this stuff in a box at the end of their driveways where anyone could take it.
Oh and I also think the song is about how there is nothing creative to do in small towns
I'm not inclined to think Jello's advocating it, because in a bunch of other songs he claims to hate the pointless violence and destruction that's associated with parts of the punk movement.