"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.
Crime's the other side of what's right
Baba lives on the wrong side of the earth
On a plain flat planet he would've been white
Nobleman by name aristocrat by birth
Selling shades on the beach by daily routine
Matches the irony of your Western magazine
Papayabananacakecoconutjuice!
Baby with the basket pushes fruits and news
While man came across the sea
To change my under-developed diaper
White man came across the sea
To wipe my ass with tabloid paper
I'm a passionate man help me first
Ease my hunger quench my thirst
Can you see yourself devoured
I'll do anything to stay empowered
Part of him feels like some new kind of Noah
But all he can carry is some hectograms of Goa
Big Mother Ocean shut the stereo down
He travelled to listen not to see
On Arambol Beach his guitar will soon sound
When the last black man's crossed the sea
His earth turned flat his passport photo black
Backpacker Baba's never coming back
Baba lives on the wrong side of the earth
On a plain flat planet he would've been white
Nobleman by name aristocrat by birth
Selling shades on the beach by daily routine
Matches the irony of your Western magazine
Papayabananacakecoconutjuice!
Baby with the basket pushes fruits and news
While man came across the sea
To change my under-developed diaper
White man came across the sea
To wipe my ass with tabloid paper
I'm a passionate man help me first
Ease my hunger quench my thirst
Can you see yourself devoured
I'll do anything to stay empowered
Part of him feels like some new kind of Noah
But all he can carry is some hectograms of Goa
Big Mother Ocean shut the stereo down
He travelled to listen not to see
On Arambol Beach his guitar will soon sound
When the last black man's crossed the sea
His earth turned flat his passport photo black
Backpacker Baba's never coming back
Lyrics submitted by awberg
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Fast Car
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I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
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