"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.
In the sticks down an old dirt road near a small Kentucky town
When his daddy would come home
Out past the old red barn in sycamore tree
Is where little Zach would go
And high above the guilt and pain
The only place that he was safe
Was high above in the strong arms of the sycamore tree
You could hear a small voice in the wind
Sayin', "Please don't let him do that to me"
Prayin' to be born again
In the sycamore tree
Time went on as it always does, and his daddy's time had come
How he felt was hard to say
He often wondered how he'd ever make it through
But as they buried him that day
He realized it's not my fault
And as the leaves began to fall
From high above in the strong arms of the sycamore tree
You could hear forgiveness in the wind
Singin' out, "Find the truth and the truth will set you free"
Broken chains and a heart on the mend
'Neath the sycamore tree, oh
And like an answer to his praying
As he watched his child playing
High above in the strong arms of the sycamore tree
You could hear a small voice in the wind
Sayin', "Please Daddy won't you come and play with me"
In the sycamore tree
The sycamore tree
Forgiveness will set you free
Forgiveness, forgiveness
Forgiveness will set you free
Forgiveness, forgiveness
When his daddy would come home
Out past the old red barn in sycamore tree
Is where little Zach would go
And high above the guilt and pain
The only place that he was safe
Was high above in the strong arms of the sycamore tree
You could hear a small voice in the wind
Sayin', "Please don't let him do that to me"
Prayin' to be born again
In the sycamore tree
Time went on as it always does, and his daddy's time had come
How he felt was hard to say
He often wondered how he'd ever make it through
But as they buried him that day
He realized it's not my fault
And as the leaves began to fall
From high above in the strong arms of the sycamore tree
You could hear forgiveness in the wind
Singin' out, "Find the truth and the truth will set you free"
Broken chains and a heart on the mend
'Neath the sycamore tree, oh
And like an answer to his praying
As he watched his child playing
High above in the strong arms of the sycamore tree
You could hear a small voice in the wind
Sayin', "Please Daddy won't you come and play with me"
In the sycamore tree
The sycamore tree
Forgiveness will set you free
Forgiveness, forgiveness
Forgiveness will set you free
Forgiveness, forgiveness
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
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Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
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I believe that, in the beginning of the song, the boy's mother dies due to complications during childbirth, for which his father never forgave him. When he says, high above the guilt and pain, I think it's meaning is that his father always made him feel guilty and blamed him, as though it was his fault that she was gone, and the pain that the boy must have felt to have neither mother nor father (because his father resented him) to care for him. In the strong arms of the sycamore tree was where he felt cared for and protected.