"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.
CHANT (6x)
Brother
Ooh-ooh
Shake it up, shake it up
Move it up, move it up
Bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro (repeat ad inf.)
Brother
Ooh-ooh
Shake it up, shake it up
Move it up, move it up
Bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro (repeat ad inf.)
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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"
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
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.
I believe that this one is a holdover from when "Diamond Dogs" was based on 1984, by George Orwell; in the book there is the five (or ten, can't recall at the moment) minute hate, in which everyone spits out their hatred towards the dissenters, given a face by a mannufactured rebel, and basically gets whipped into a frenzy. Unfortunately, Orwell's wife would now allow Bowie to use the text of the book on his album, so it was rewritten at the last moment.
Yes, it's the minute of hate, quite obviously.
Two minutes hate actually. Which fits in with the songs two minute length.
I think Bowie went off script here. I understand your comments, but I think that he is hitting on the other images of the album --the world is dangerous (post apocolytic (sp?) and there is always the dangerous people that will circle around to peck at the carcass.....That is the imagine I have taking into account the preamble of the album.
I remember during one of the last scenes in the Ministry of Love O'Brien takes Winston before a mirror and says 'If you are really a man then you are the last man on Eearth; what you see before you is all that remains of humanity' and the narration describes it as a world of skeletons. It is the moment at which most of his resolve was destroyed (the rest of it went during his visit to Room 101) and I think, along with the two-minute hate reference (which makes a lot of sense) I think this song is also a reference to Winston seeing himself in the mirrors.
right... I thought this was just some random intermission, branch off the big brother song.
God I just love the way the end came out. This is the follow-up of 1984. I still don't know what the reason is for the title of this song, but then again, he was too coked up, right? Originally, at the end, he wanted the final word to be "BROTHER!" IInstead, the record skipped. And when he listened to that, he said, "Scratch that. I want this instead!"