"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.
It seems sap is sweet on hands,
But in trees its subject to an even higher power.
And no matter how you feel
It will tend to, tending to keep you alive.
And the rest: a simple time stretching of one earth & common fabric...
Of fragile blood run cellular engine and something or other...
Is there no sort of luck involved
In not being born an ant or elephant...
Or is this just, pure and unadulterated math,
Water willed, and egg improvised,
Until hatched by knife light then...
Mother named, after her extremely painful experience.
Allowing the vast maze of birth and mistake,
To take its toll on all that practical destiny
And then child-sized specificity.
Lain there,
Inherent in the once one cellded organism.
A consummate pin-hole poked in the plot behind planet earth and such.
A pin-hole poked...Is enough to sink an entire universe of tiny ships.
Freeing all that perfect principal lain inherent
In a step by step schematic of the human dive.
And when planets align... all you can do is dive...
And this... this is the soft spear of the human condition,
But you yourself are not.
You are more...
The pulled on skull of something that was never really all that young.
You are more...
One wung
And consumed by your most gross of concerns.
Can you remain in love from deep space,
With no fish bowl on and a busted communicator...
Or have you everything planned.
Is there a simple universal system of buoy and rope,
That you would use to tug your weightless mass along on,
Till you found a planet that you felt might be just right for you.
Or is it possible the view of earth at such a distance
Would have played you for the fool as well...
Hour hero yes had known you there'd be days like this...
And they'd come with the rain on of course.
A good gallon of reverb let loose on your personal truth,
Dark eared on the edge of your sleeping slab.
Having been bent born & went phantom dayed,
Hope stole on in the equal parts miracle of
Bringing yourself to and from sleep.
In calendrical waltz...
All to feel aimed,
At last, your heartjaw kissed against the coming dawn...
In dive
Let go at last
Our hero yes is done dove,
Safe through several more hypothetical "seconds before death,"
Unto the never similar wilds of his ground teeth powered and be -movie dreams.
It begins...
With all white, in a sound proofed hallway
Your staring down the empty eye slits of a lowsocket. waking
On the floor at the foot of the bright light blocking and locked
Hundredth door of luck.
At the opposite end of the hall sits a pair of empty pay public binoculars,
Slumped, facing your way.
In the dead of their stare, you marvel about,
Until you eye this one door that appears to be both half open and closed.
And are drawn moth to the bulb,
Head down, as if reeled round a gear by the guts,
Inching toward your intuit-picked portal of choice...
Now knelt, yet not without nerves in this moment of mostly glory,
You look for the knob, and see nothing but healed shut keyhole.
Dax-strong in this dream you begin to cut key
In the furthest corner of a clearest skull,
When you feel your kneecaps being nursed by a white on white welcome mat.
You tilt your skull to read "WOE-BE-GONE" only written wrong or in mirror. Your hands and heart full of edge, you lift the mat gently,
And there beneath it's omen embroidered, sits an intact wishingbone...
You carefully lift your instrument of certain luck to the door,
And it slowly unclenches the scar seem set where it's keyhole would be....
And so you snap bliss bone, cut wish and begin to lock pick...
Until you hear trough the thick of the door the deadbolt caughing loose...
Suddenly the fear black above your skull, beneath your skin goes wild.
As the door of your choice opens itself slowly...
Sealing off your face with perfect stripes of rising bone and angst,
Of alabaster and pit,
Allowing the bright right light of luck
To completely believe
And eclipse you...
But in trees its subject to an even higher power.
And no matter how you feel
It will tend to, tending to keep you alive.
And the rest: a simple time stretching of one earth & common fabric...
Of fragile blood run cellular engine and something or other...
Is there no sort of luck involved
In not being born an ant or elephant...
Or is this just, pure and unadulterated math,
Water willed, and egg improvised,
Until hatched by knife light then...
Mother named, after her extremely painful experience.
Allowing the vast maze of birth and mistake,
To take its toll on all that practical destiny
And then child-sized specificity.
Lain there,
Inherent in the once one cellded organism.
A consummate pin-hole poked in the plot behind planet earth and such.
A pin-hole poked...Is enough to sink an entire universe of tiny ships.
Freeing all that perfect principal lain inherent
In a step by step schematic of the human dive.
And when planets align... all you can do is dive...
And this... this is the soft spear of the human condition,
But you yourself are not.
You are more...
The pulled on skull of something that was never really all that young.
You are more...
One wung
And consumed by your most gross of concerns.
Can you remain in love from deep space,
With no fish bowl on and a busted communicator...
Or have you everything planned.
Is there a simple universal system of buoy and rope,
That you would use to tug your weightless mass along on,
Till you found a planet that you felt might be just right for you.
Or is it possible the view of earth at such a distance
Would have played you for the fool as well...
Hour hero yes had known you there'd be days like this...
And they'd come with the rain on of course.
A good gallon of reverb let loose on your personal truth,
Dark eared on the edge of your sleeping slab.
Having been bent born & went phantom dayed,
Hope stole on in the equal parts miracle of
Bringing yourself to and from sleep.
In calendrical waltz...
All to feel aimed,
At last, your heartjaw kissed against the coming dawn...
In dive
Let go at last
Our hero yes is done dove,
Safe through several more hypothetical "seconds before death,"
Unto the never similar wilds of his ground teeth powered and be -movie dreams.
It begins...
With all white, in a sound proofed hallway
Your staring down the empty eye slits of a lowsocket. waking
On the floor at the foot of the bright light blocking and locked
Hundredth door of luck.
At the opposite end of the hall sits a pair of empty pay public binoculars,
Slumped, facing your way.
In the dead of their stare, you marvel about,
Until you eye this one door that appears to be both half open and closed.
And are drawn moth to the bulb,
Head down, as if reeled round a gear by the guts,
Inching toward your intuit-picked portal of choice...
Now knelt, yet not without nerves in this moment of mostly glory,
You look for the knob, and see nothing but healed shut keyhole.
Dax-strong in this dream you begin to cut key
In the furthest corner of a clearest skull,
When you feel your kneecaps being nursed by a white on white welcome mat.
You tilt your skull to read "WOE-BE-GONE" only written wrong or in mirror. Your hands and heart full of edge, you lift the mat gently,
And there beneath it's omen embroidered, sits an intact wishingbone...
You carefully lift your instrument of certain luck to the door,
And it slowly unclenches the scar seem set where it's keyhole would be....
And so you snap bliss bone, cut wish and begin to lock pick...
Until you hear trough the thick of the door the deadbolt caughing loose...
Suddenly the fear black above your skull, beneath your skin goes wild.
As the door of your choice opens itself slowly...
Sealing off your face with perfect stripes of rising bone and angst,
Of alabaster and pit,
Allowing the bright right light of luck
To completely believe
And eclipse you...
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More Featured Meanings
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"
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
When We Were Young
Blink-182
Blink-182
This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
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.
I took it as the journey of life. At the beginning of the song our "hero" is born and at the end he becomes eclipsed by the light.
The part where the beat boxing hits is incredible.
Though a little less final than other opinions given, I believe The Ends is really just an Ends to both Hour Hero, Yes's dependence on his high class life, his own selfish mind and perhaps his cloudy self image? The mention of a mother before the eclipse of The Hero gives an impression of the vitality that a mother takes in general life. Throughout the album, Hour Hero, Yes always maintains a standard of selfishness and vanity. The fact that a mother named NOW, during The Ends implies that there is a point now where The Hero realizes that he is not so great as to give birth to himself alone. That he himself was once a one-celled-organism. "At the foot of the bright light blocking and locked hundredth door of luck." Another 'door' he has been found before (reference to Nomanisisland), only this is “the door of your choice”. It seems strange to me that the rest of the song is about him trying to get inside of this door, (with a wishbone, of all instruments!) and the moment he does, he takes on the only form we've seen him; perhaps finally- FINALLY, our hero sees himself as he has been all along.
Ps: The last half is a different song from the Yell and Ice album, in case you did what I did and turned up your song as loud as possible so you could try to make out the words in the music. It's just music.
It's totally about the middleclass hero. The way I interpret it is from the start of someone who is the little guy being a hero for the little guy, eventually "dies" or fails in his efforts. If you notice, the final "music" aside from the final four minutes of weirdness is actually the end of Middleclass Kill.
Basically the middleclass hero steps up to the plate and eventually is 'stomped and killed' by the corporate overlords.
Fucking GREAT song.