"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.
Spy spy pretty girl
I see you see me through your window
Don't turn your nose up
Well you can if you need to you won't be the first or the last
It must strain you to look down so far from your father's house
And I know what a louse like me in his house could do for you
I'm the cream
Of the great Utopia dream
And you're the gleam
In the depths of your banker's spleen
I'm a phallus in pigtails
And there's blood on my nose
And my tissue is rotting
Where the rats chew my bones
And my eye sockets empty
See nothing but pain
I keep having this brainstorm
About twelve times a day
So nowYou could spend the morning walking with mequite amazed
As I'm unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed
I got eyes in my backside
That see electric tomatoes
On credit card rye bread
There are children in washrooms
Holding hands with a queen
And my heads full of murders
Where only killers scream
So now you could spend the morning talking with me quite amazed
Look out I'm raving mad and somewhat slightly dazed
Now you run from your window
To the porcelain bowl
And you're sick from your ears
To the red parquet floor
And the braque on the wall
Slides down your front
And eats through your belly
It's very catching
So nowyou should spend the mornings lying to your father quite amazed
About the strange unwashed and happily slightly dazed
I see you see me through your window
Don't turn your nose up
Well you can if you need to you won't be the first or the last
It must strain you to look down so far from your father's house
And I know what a louse like me in his house could do for you
I'm the cream
Of the great Utopia dream
And you're the gleam
In the depths of your banker's spleen
I'm a phallus in pigtails
And there's blood on my nose
And my tissue is rotting
Where the rats chew my bones
And my eye sockets empty
See nothing but pain
I keep having this brainstorm
About twelve times a day
So nowYou could spend the morning walking with mequite amazed
As I'm unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed
I got eyes in my backside
That see electric tomatoes
On credit card rye bread
There are children in washrooms
Holding hands with a queen
And my heads full of murders
Where only killers scream
So now you could spend the morning talking with me quite amazed
Look out I'm raving mad and somewhat slightly dazed
Now you run from your window
To the porcelain bowl
And you're sick from your ears
To the red parquet floor
And the braque on the wall
Slides down your front
And eats through your belly
It's very catching
So nowyou should spend the mornings lying to your father quite amazed
About the strange unwashed and happily slightly dazed
Lyrics submitted by softasfire
Unwashed & Somewhat Slightly Dazed Lyrics as written by David Bowie
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I would love to know what this song is about. I read that its about a bad trip. Not sure about that one though. Bowie said that he felt "unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed" in the weeks after his father died, so maybe its about that?