"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.
Herr Drosselmeyer's Doll
There she is on the stage
Spinning as she sprawls
Thank God the curtains fall
Her spring is sprung
And dances done
Spinning as she sprawls
Thank God the curtains fall
In the morning, he twists the key quite hard
And ticking, she's brought to boil
"Relevé, my sweet, en pointe, en garde!"
Her innards twang as they uncoil
Herr Doktor's fingertips trace by
On craquelature from every fall
The daylight made to race right by
With paint and paste and stitch and awl
"Patient, patient, bumblebee,
Soon your audience admire
A shapely arabesque or three
I'll wind you up, you'll never tire."
Starry tutu, sullen moon
A frozen carmine mouth
Twinkles as she jerks and swoons
The ladies ushered out
"Gentlemen, this fallen angel is the illegitimate daughter of art and science. A modern marvel of engineering, clockworks elevated to the very natural process which even now is in your blood, racing, your eyes flashing at such irreproachable beauty. Here is Gaia, here is Eve, here is Lilith, and I stand before you as her father. Sprung fully-formed from my brow, dewy and sweet; she can be yours and yours again, for her flesh is the incorruptible pale to be excused from the wages of sin."
(winds her up)
And as the sack cloth, sodden, slumps
Beneath these chipped and china limbs
The sour flesh pines, grunts and thumps
"Step right up, boys, tuppence for a spin!"
There she is on the stage
Spinning as she sprawls
Thank God the curtains fall
Her spring is sprung
And dances done
Spinning as she sprawls
Thank God the curtains fall
In the morning, he twists the key quite hard
And ticking, she's brought to boil
"Relevé, my sweet, en pointe, en garde!"
Her innards twang as they uncoil
Herr Doktor's fingertips trace by
On craquelature from every fall
The daylight made to race right by
With paint and paste and stitch and awl
"Patient, patient, bumblebee,
Soon your audience admire
A shapely arabesque or three
I'll wind you up, you'll never tire."
Starry tutu, sullen moon
A frozen carmine mouth
Twinkles as she jerks and swoons
The ladies ushered out
"Gentlemen, this fallen angel is the illegitimate daughter of art and science. A modern marvel of engineering, clockworks elevated to the very natural process which even now is in your blood, racing, your eyes flashing at such irreproachable beauty. Here is Gaia, here is Eve, here is Lilith, and I stand before you as her father. Sprung fully-formed from my brow, dewy and sweet; she can be yours and yours again, for her flesh is the incorruptible pale to be excused from the wages of sin."
(winds her up)
And as the sack cloth, sodden, slumps
Beneath these chipped and china limbs
The sour flesh pines, grunts and thumps
"Step right up, boys, tuppence for a spin!"
Lyrics submitted by amnesiaclyric
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I think one of the best parts is when the narrator refers to his doll as these Goddess Figures Gaia-mother earth, Eve-like adam and eve in the garden of eden, Lilith who was the first woman, created before eve, even the line "sprung fully formed from my brow" is refering to the Goddess Athena who when she was born was swollowed whole by Zeus only to be born as a full grown woman when she lept from Zeus' skull.