"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.
Initiate blood purge
Coalition in massacre
Mechanized high tech
Whole sale death in effect
Mutually assured
Destruction will occur
Genocide revised
Same pain through diverse eyes
Can't stop the warring factions
Hostile from the start
Always war always
Ending bitter peace
Not the last third war
Blood spills for evermore
Patriot hard line
Lay siege till the end of time
No longer kill your brother
Just slaughter one another
Watch for the deadly other
This sibling is a fucker
Can't stop the warring factions
Global tension starts aggression
Peace breaks out then
Breeds contempt unrest
Without a reason to fight
A time to kill
Sick lust for skeletal flesh
A taste for all decay
Enter the solider blind
Stalking the faceless hunt
There is no conscience in this world
That can be reached for peace
Why face the human question
The need to hate
Dead stare though cynical eyes
A trust in only pain
Murder within the skin
Engrave the art of war
Become death's vile parade
March on embrace the violent mind
Can't stop the warring factions
Global tension starts aggression
Peace breaks out then
Breeds contempt unrest
One cryptic reason for life murder
Coalition in massacre
Mechanized high tech
Whole sale death in effect
Mutually assured
Destruction will occur
Genocide revised
Same pain through diverse eyes
Can't stop the warring factions
Hostile from the start
Always war always
Ending bitter peace
Not the last third war
Blood spills for evermore
Patriot hard line
Lay siege till the end of time
No longer kill your brother
Just slaughter one another
Watch for the deadly other
This sibling is a fucker
Can't stop the warring factions
Global tension starts aggression
Peace breaks out then
Breeds contempt unrest
Without a reason to fight
A time to kill
Sick lust for skeletal flesh
A taste for all decay
Enter the solider blind
Stalking the faceless hunt
There is no conscience in this world
That can be reached for peace
Why face the human question
The need to hate
Dead stare though cynical eyes
A trust in only pain
Murder within the skin
Engrave the art of war
Become death's vile parade
March on embrace the violent mind
Can't stop the warring factions
Global tension starts aggression
Peace breaks out then
Breeds contempt unrest
One cryptic reason for life murder
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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"
Dreamwalker
Silent Planet
Silent Planet
I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
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
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.
I don't think that anyone else, writes lyrics, that say more about certain aspects of the human experience as Slayer. This can be interpreted as an anti-war song, but it isn't one per se. What it is, is a very truthful description about the impulse to go to war, and the joy that is experienced in war. It is saying that these darker sides of humanity, are still part of us. I could say this about so many other Slayer songs, that it is brilliant, because it does not judge. It demasks something we don't want to look at, for what it is. The judgement is for us to make.
It is not about the tensions that people claim lead to war, it's about something deep inside of us, that makes war possible. "One, cryptic meaning to life, muder," strips war of all it's pretenses, and states, that war IS murder, that people go to war to kill, and that is not something that other explanations for war (such as claiming global tensions between different people) does not address.
There are better anti-war songs, because this is not an anti-war song. Anti-war songs say "war is bad," this song says "a truth of war, is that people enjoy it," or rather, that there are aspects of war that people like, and to understand war, me must not just look at specific things that instigate war in the newspapers and history books, but ourseleves.
The older I get, the more pacifisic I am in my own philosophy, and I have nothing agaist being anti-war. But this songs has no judgement, it strives for the truth. It is anti-war, in that it demasks war for the stupid butchary that is is, and ironically, that message is conveyed all the more powerfully, by the songs refusal to condem war outright. It says war is murder, but not that war is bad. That is something we project onto the song.
Oh, and this is my favorite song ever.
THIS BADASS song....is about tensions and war around the globe.....think: the kosovo thing, or terrorism, ya know....that whole mess. jeff hanneman is the war junky in slayer...for all you posers to know.
lol, nice ix =P i must agree -_-; but its fucking awsome song -^.^-
Don't get me wrong, I do like this song, but I think as an anti-war song there are better written, more concise (specific even?) anti-war songs. I think these lyrics although nonetheless cool, strike me as being somewhat meaningless and generic.
Intro is fucking badass.