"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.
We were called to the forest
And we went down
A wind wind blew warm and eloquent
We were searching for the secrets of the universe
We rounded up demons and forced them
To tell us what it all meant
We tied them to trees
And broke them down, one by one
On a scrap of paper they wrote these words
(And as we read them, the sun broke
Through the trees)
Dread the passage of jesus, for he will not return
Then we headed back to our world
And left the forest behind
Our hearts singing with all the knowledge of love
But somewhere, somehow, we lost the message
Along the way
And when we got home, we bought ourselves a house
And we bought a car that we did not use
And we bought a cage,and two singing birds
And at night we'd sit and listen to the canary song
For we'd both run right out of words
Now the stars they are all angled wrong
And the sun and the moon refuse to burn
But I remember a message
In a demon's hand
Dread the passage of jesus, for he does not return
He does not return
He does not return
And we went down
A wind wind blew warm and eloquent
We were searching for the secrets of the universe
We rounded up demons and forced them
To tell us what it all meant
We tied them to trees
And broke them down, one by one
On a scrap of paper they wrote these words
(And as we read them, the sun broke
Through the trees)
Dread the passage of jesus, for he will not return
Then we headed back to our world
And left the forest behind
Our hearts singing with all the knowledge of love
But somewhere, somehow, we lost the message
Along the way
And when we got home, we bought ourselves a house
And we bought a car that we did not use
And we bought a cage,and two singing birds
And at night we'd sit and listen to the canary song
For we'd both run right out of words
Now the stars they are all angled wrong
And the sun and the moon refuse to burn
But I remember a message
In a demon's hand
Dread the passage of jesus, for he does not return
He does not return
He does not return
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More Featured Meanings
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
Mountain Song
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
Blue
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. He expresses the realization that he might never find another on this stringed instrumental by Aaron Dessner.
Page
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
I think that he could be making a statement about mistranslations and how the messages of the past and the bible can be lost. By "Dread the passage of Jesus, for he will not return." he could mean that we should not take the messages of the bible and Jesus too seriously otherwise we end up waiting for something that never comes and instead of finding our own paths, whilst we wait for this second coming that never comes we fill our void with shallow materialistic wealth "and we bought a car that we did not use..."
'Time Jesum transeuntum et non reverentum' (this is the correct way of writing it) in latin means "you have to fear when Jesus passes by and he's not honoured, respected'<br />
I don't think it's about not taking the Bible seriously, given that there are actual demons in the narrative and the signs of the Second Coming DO begin to appear at the end. I think it's more about our capacity for self-deception and complacency, about reading what we want to hear into the things we're told -- the demons give them an ominous, enigmatic explanation and the couple first misinterprets it as an assurance that there will be no Second Coming (so there's nothing to worry about and they can do as they please), then fails to think any further about it. They mire themselves in the banal, the material, and the selfish, and grow apart. So when the signs of the Second Coming begin to appear the narrator is suddenly confronted with the nagging fear that he may have misinterpreted the demons' words -- that the demons meant Jesus IS coming, but when he passes by this time he won't be coming back to pick up any stragglers. There will be no "Third Coming" and the two lovers will find themselves unprepared and unworthy... After all, why did they seek wisdom from demons in the first place?<br /> <br /> There's also the possibility that the demons were simply lying and the couple believed them because they wanted to believe them. So when the signs of the Second Coming appear, the narrator realizes he might have wasted his life and tries to reassure himself that Jesus isn't coming and the Judgment isn't at hand. Hence the repetition at the end -- he's repeating it as a mantra or a prayer, trying to convince himself that the signs don't mean what he fears they mean.