"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.
Exotic vision
Permanently red-light
Squinting for hours
Natural American spirit doctorate
Make love to inanimate objects
Pasteboard decked out in Ikea finery
Without use of a pole she swings
Her thighs clamped 'round infinity
In the eye of a maelstrom of Marlboro mail-order memorabilia
Rivers, mountains and smoking shirt jackets
I am his liver
I'm gray and decaying
My texture's a sidewalk
And Notre Dame's playing
Afternoon's wristwatch
Deposited in nightstand's drawer
If Jerry knew he'd build a marquee
And charge her silent watchers
And they'd pay in foreign-looking coins
That would turn to dust in his dresser, by morning, yeah
You're gaslighting me
I can see through the dusk beams
Walking with your fingers in splints, yeah
In her last moments I pined for times
When I could never have dreamed of being responsible
For the charred remains presently huffed by the most famous of
The celebrity teenage drug casualties
The wind the wind the wind the wind the wind the wind
Permanently red-light
Squinting for hours
Natural American spirit doctorate
Make love to inanimate objects
Pasteboard decked out in Ikea finery
Without use of a pole she swings
Her thighs clamped 'round infinity
In the eye of a maelstrom of Marlboro mail-order memorabilia
Rivers, mountains and smoking shirt jackets
I am his liver
I'm gray and decaying
My texture's a sidewalk
And Notre Dame's playing
Afternoon's wristwatch
Deposited in nightstand's drawer
If Jerry knew he'd build a marquee
And charge her silent watchers
And they'd pay in foreign-looking coins
That would turn to dust in his dresser, by morning, yeah
You're gaslighting me
I can see through the dusk beams
Walking with your fingers in splints, yeah
In her last moments I pined for times
When I could never have dreamed of being responsible
For the charred remains presently huffed by the most famous of
The celebrity teenage drug casualties
The wind the wind the wind the wind the wind the wind
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Yeah, the line mentioning IKEA finery also recalls the protagonist's apartment.