"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.
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
Struck by the sounds before the sun
I knew the night had gone
The morning breeze like a bugle blew
Against the drum of dawn
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
The ocean wild like an organ played
The seaweed wove its strands
The crashing waves like cymbals clashed
Against the rocks and the sand
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
I stood unwound beneath the skies
And clouds unbound by laws
The crying rain like a trumpet sang
And asked for no applause
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
The last of leaves fell from the trees
And clung to a new love's breast
The branches bare like a banjo moan
To the winds that listen the best
I gazed down in the river's mirror
And watched its winding strum
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
Struck by the sounds before the sun
I knew the night had gone
The morning breeze like a bugle blew
Against the drum of dawn
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
The ocean wild like an organ played
The seaweed wove its strands
The crashing waves like cymbals clashed
Against the rocks and the sand
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
I stood unwound beneath the skies
And clouds unbound by laws
The crying rain like a trumpet sang
And asked for no applause
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
The last of leaves fell from the trees
And clung to a new love's breast
The branches bare like a banjo moan
To the winds that listen the best
I gazed down in the river's mirror
And watched its winding strum
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
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Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
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"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
No Surprises
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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.
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.
FYI, Beulah, Dylan wrote this song in the early 1960s.. so, no, it's not a tribute to Jeff or Tim or any otherr Buckley.
Yeah it's definately not a tribute to Jeff Buckley, it was recorded in 1963 at Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' sessions (it wasn't released until 1985 on Biograph), he played it 2 nights later at a show at Carnegie hall - appearently those are the only times he's played this song.
The line 'Lay down your weary tune, lay down' Dylan heard in a hymn - 'I heard the voice of Jesus say / Come unto me and rest / Lay down thou weary tune, lay down'. Also the structure of the song is appearently based upon a song from Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings.
The actual content of the song is based on one of Dylan's first LSD trips, connecting this tune in his head to his surroundings - resulting in some amazing, surreal imagery.
This is one of my favourite songs of Dylan's, it's a shame it was take out of the album The Times They Are A-Changin', not only because i like it so much but it does show the start of a new direction in his creativity and career.
Bob didn't use drugs to write songs. He said so himself many times. It's an insult to his work to say that the wonderful imagery coming from this song was simply a result of drugs.
This song wisely advises us to be aware that what we create, dream or otherwise construct, pales in the face of the beauty, intricacy and wonder of the natural world. The intelligence of the universe. Possible my favourite Dylan song.
One of my alltime favourite songs.
i read somewhere that he wrote this song while staying at joan baez's place in big sur...
I've been a BD fan for a while now. Knew OF this song, but never really listened to it. Bored at work....read the lyrics....listened on youtube. What a gorgeous song.
This was written back in the day when Dylan was super charged with a feel for what is right and what is just. He was so attuned to the real warmth of things amidst a cold or crazy world. He had a feel and touch for arcing his songs around that kind of feeling. His melodies did it, his voice did it, his harmonica did it and if that wasn't enough...he wrote lyrics of beauty and truth and skill and quality.
Lay Down Your Weary Tune, like someone posted earlier is basically a song where the singer stands in awe of creation...of earth, of nature. He stands in awe, humbled in his own attempts...in his own struggles to express himself. It says that the true melodies are played by the trees and the oceans, the mornings and the sky...and what's more, they don't need applause. Beauty and life is in nature and sometimes, when we can't express it, that's where we should look. That Bob Dylan managed to use the theme of a struggle for expression in a song about where to find true expression...and have the song be expressive....well that's pretty damn good.
I think 'awe' is the wrong word to use. He doesn't really stand in awe...he stands in a more subtle way...something like the way a tired child might come to his mother's arms...fall to her and be held, eyes half closed. Or like someone who's walked a long way and finally come home. So I think standing in 'awe' is wrong...that kind of implies some kind of mejesty...when really it's something more humble than that...it's standing in love maybe....I don't know
It's a great song. I need more time to think about it. I only just heard it today.
The lines "The last of leaves fell from the trees And clung to a new love's breast" could refer to leaves falling from a tree in late autumn onto someone's grave--the new breast.
i was reading "Positively Fourth Street" by David Hadju and he wrote that Dylan actually wrote this song while he was living in California with Joan Baez. One night he and Richard Farina went surfing in the moonlight and Dylan came back and wrote this song in one sitting. He [Hadju] seemed to imply that it Dylan was writing about Joan Baez and that he is critiquing her
Dylan did write this at Joan's place in Carmel while staying there with her and her family. Seems to have been inspired by the natural beauty of the location and Joan's record collection (the tune is similar to "The water is wide" and similar folk ballads). He must've been thinking about a sort of "life is music/music is life" meta thing around this time; "The eternal circle" has a similar theme but with concert as metaphor rather than nature.
I don't know a lot about Bob Dylan so I don't know when he wrote this but I can see it as a tribute to Jeff Buckley as he drowned in a river "I gazed down in the river's mirror...". Of course the time he wrote this would determine whether this is true or not.
This is my second favourite song of Dylan anyway. Tribute or no tribute.
I think it could be about leaving a mark on the world when it comes your time to die.
@beulah thats ridiculous????????????