"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.
Looking for a ladder
In the stratosphere
So I can be happy
Let my bones melt away
Stranded on a plane
That was circling round
I carry my heart
Like a soldier with a hand grenade
Walking down the aisle
In the supermarket
Looking for the things ought to
Carry my senses away
Listen to the ring
Of the telephone
Somebody's calling
Somebody's all alone
Looking for a home
In the magazine page
Wages in my pocket
Gonna buy me anything that I need
Searching for fame
My battery light
Wash me away
Gaping at the oceans below.
Nobody's scared
'Cause there's nobody there
Mind is awake
Anything could lead me astray
Listen to the voice
On the radio wave
Somebody needs you
Somebody's far away.
In the stratosphere
So I can be happy
Let my bones melt away
Stranded on a plane
That was circling round
I carry my heart
Like a soldier with a hand grenade
Walking down the aisle
In the supermarket
Looking for the things ought to
Carry my senses away
Listen to the ring
Of the telephone
Somebody's calling
Somebody's all alone
Looking for a home
In the magazine page
Wages in my pocket
Gonna buy me anything that I need
Searching for fame
My battery light
Wash me away
Gaping at the oceans below.
Nobody's scared
'Cause there's nobody there
Mind is awake
Anything could lead me astray
Listen to the voice
On the radio wave
Somebody needs you
Somebody's far away.
Lyrics submitted by pennylanechic
Movie Theme Lyrics as written by Hansen Godrich
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Fast Car
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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.
This song may be my least favorite off of the new album. A little too drawn out it seems. The theme of the song is major depression based on the lyrics and tone of the music. The speaker in the song has lost his purpose and direction in life. The use of the words "looking" and/or "searching" in nearly every stanza shows this loss of direction.
In the first two stanzas, he experiments with drugs to soothe his pains to let his "bones melt away". But, the drugs didn't work for him because he gets "stranded" and his heart becomes like a "hand grenade". In the next four stanzas, the speaker continues his wandering for various things to give him satisfaction or to "carry his senses away." Despite the fact he's got wages to buy himself "anything he needs", he wants to be "washed away (suicide?/major life change)".
In the 7th stanza, he faces the belief that he has lost himself completely, so "nobody's there" in his head.
The speaker might experience the most pain in the last stanza. There's a voice calling for him that needs him, but the speaker has placed himself so far away from the rest of the world within his own misery. If he does kill himself, the speaker will have to deal with the fact that there was someone that needed him to live, but he failed that person to end his own suffering.
I think it's possible this is another tribute song to Elliott Smith. It could be Beck's attempt to sympathize with the mindset that Smith must have had to live with in his final days.