"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.
The party's over
I never thought you'd stay
The love of laughter
My truth's no longer sane
The party's over
Much older than you'd say
This friend of no one
Time creases on your face
Take a look at the kids
I've been losing track
This crime of being uncertain of your love
Is all I'm guilty of
The party's over
I never thought you'd stay
A style of reason
This life of masquerade
Take a look at the kids
I've been losing track
This crime of being
Uncertain of your love
Is all I'm guilty of
Take this punishment away Lord
Name the crime I'm guilty of
Too much hope I've seen as virtue
Name the crime I'm guilty of
I never thought you'd stay
The love of laughter
My truth's no longer sane
The party's over
Much older than you'd say
This friend of no one
Time creases on your face
Take a look at the kids
I've been losing track
This crime of being uncertain of your love
Is all I'm guilty of
The party's over
I never thought you'd stay
A style of reason
This life of masquerade
Take a look at the kids
I've been losing track
This crime of being
Uncertain of your love
Is all I'm guilty of
Take this punishment away Lord
Name the crime I'm guilty of
Too much hope I've seen as virtue
Name the crime I'm guilty of
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
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"
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.
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.
Amazing
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran tells a story of unsuccessfully trying to feel “Amazing.” This track is about the being weighed down by emotional stress despite valiant attempts to find some positivity in the situation. This track was written by Ed Sheeran from the perspective of his friend. From the track, we see this person fall deeper into the negative thoughts and slide further down the path of mental torment with every lyric.
To me this is about the breakdown point of a long-term relationship, likely a marriage, that the protagonist has been holding out for some time that the writing hasn't been on the wall for this relationship to completely collapse.
Looking deeper, it would seem that the protagonist has inevitably developed a love/hate relationship with their partner, complicated by varying factors like "...being uncertain of your love", how their partner seems to have no social circle outside of their family, is somewhat doubtful or in denial of the strength of the relationship themselves, and the most awkward (and a very common reason in real life) being the involvement of what is presumably their children for whom they've likely stuck together for the sake of, with an opportunity that hopefully at some point in the future the relationship can strengthen again - but it's now reached the point of no return in terms of separating and that neither have any need now to live "...this life of masquerade". As the title sums up, the party's over.
Overall it's probably the strongest song on Talk Talk's debut album and it's one of those songs that I wished that it had been recorded later around the time "The Colour Of Spring" was being made, where there would have been much less reliance on synths and could have had included a choir or some element of an orchestral feel, especially in the second half of the song when the tone changes.