"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.
I was walking alone on the ocean
I felt a fever burning up all I am
'Cause if there's one thing that I can't stand
It's standing next to my fellow man, ah
It's about to break, oh
For the social worker at the needle exchange
For the soft medicated and the hard deranged
For the lesbians at the bakery
Saying, "Do you really hate me?"
It's about to break
Break like a fever
It's about to break
Break like a fever
People looking for themselves without mirrors
Well, not knowing why you're here
Public appearance is the verge of tears
When you're out, you get off on weed and beer
Stand up now, let me look at you
Can we all take a part of you?
Stand up now, let me look at you
Can we all take a part of you?
You're dangerous with a stinger, missile
Weapons hot, thinking this will
We won't make them follow orders
Doctors without borders
It's about to break
It's about to break
Break like a fever
When I see your face, I wanna be in the human race
(Break like a fever)
You're beautiful, it's true, I wanna be beautiful life you
When I see your face, I wanna be in the human race
For the teenage mother with the baby asleep
For apricot when life is cheap
For losing faith
America fades into myth
I felt a fever burning up all I am
'Cause if there's one thing that I can't stand
It's standing next to my fellow man, ah
It's about to break, oh
For the social worker at the needle exchange
For the soft medicated and the hard deranged
For the lesbians at the bakery
Saying, "Do you really hate me?"
It's about to break
Break like a fever
It's about to break
Break like a fever
People looking for themselves without mirrors
Well, not knowing why you're here
Public appearance is the verge of tears
When you're out, you get off on weed and beer
Stand up now, let me look at you
Can we all take a part of you?
Stand up now, let me look at you
Can we all take a part of you?
You're dangerous with a stinger, missile
Weapons hot, thinking this will
We won't make them follow orders
Doctors without borders
It's about to break
It's about to break
Break like a fever
When I see your face, I wanna be in the human race
(Break like a fever)
You're beautiful, it's true, I wanna be beautiful life you
When I see your face, I wanna be in the human race
For the teenage mother with the baby asleep
For apricot when life is cheap
For losing faith
America fades into myth
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"
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.
Head > Heels
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Head > Heels” is a track that aims to capture what it feels like to experience romance that exceeds expectations. Ed Sheeran dedicates his album outro to a lover who has blessed him with a unique experience that he seeks to describe through the song’s nuanced lyrics.
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.
This song is powerful... and sad. What kuomika quoted is exactly what I'm feeling. It's an ominous feeling of an impending global war or something. A breakdown in the liberal vs. conservative tension.
And yes I feel it everywhere. It's like almost everything everyone is feeling nowadays is how to hate everyone else. From homophobia (the increasingly violent), to tea-partyers (the increasingly violent calls to action against 'socialists'), to conservatives (the anti-immigration law, thinly veiled latent racism, the hysterical Obama-blaming centered primarily on his being black), to religion (Fred Phelps, Islamic Terrorism, the slow mutation of Christianity into a religion of pointing fingers), to thought (anti-intellectualism, the growing resentment against scientists for 'taking away tax dollars'), To politics (the 'politics of fear', us against them platforms), to the environment (the apathy on global warming, the oil spill, and the decline of environmentalist mentality).
People's views are getting narrower and narrower, and some are already refusing to accept common humanity as a good enough reason to try and bridge the gaps. No one empathizes anymore. No one sees just how much suffering they are inflicting on other people. No one wants to see the long-term impacts of what they are demanding for.
If you don't know what I mean try reading comments in news stories sometime, the way people laugh at global disasters half the world away, the way people try to find out the race of a criminal and then blame it all on race if he turns out to be not white, the encouragement on shooting illegal border crossers on sight, the holier-than-thou arguments of the bible thumpers calling for the killing of homosexuals as if they were animals, the blanket blaming on terrorism where americans make it worse by provoking the peaceful muslim majority, the comparison of socialism to soviet communism as if they are even the same thing (they're not), the calls for war, greed (the refusal of people to have their tax dollars used in saving lives, the support of big companies for conservatives in exchange for tax breaks, the refusal to take responsibility of the fact that 1% of the population of America owns 35% of the nation's wealth, while the people who actually do the work, the bottom %40 divide 0.2% of the wealth among themselves. And you wonder why the economy collapsed).
History always repeats itself doesn't it? WW2 seems so far away now, 50 years is all it takes to forget the real horrors of war. No one seems to realize what they are asking for. Especially now that the threat of war doesn't anymore mean merely street fighting and tanks and airplanes. No.
If war broke out today it'd be nuclear.
It's scary because sometimes I feel like I'm the only one aware of it. The most powerful line in the song for me is this:
"Stand up and let me get a look at you Can we all take a wider view"
EDIT: From homophobia (the refusal to accept it as not being a choice, the 'selective' reading when it comes to reading the Bible, the glee Christians show when gay people get killed for no reason)<br /> <br /> And yeah one thing I forgot to add: the 'break' may still come out positive in the end. But yeah, it will come at a price.
I disagree. I think that as a country everyone is too "open minded". Which bythe way, open minded is just a eupehmism nowadays for liberal thought. Any conservative view is "closed-minded" My point is that homosexuals are widely accepted. I DONT think that feeling attracted to the same sex is a choice, but I know that acting on those feelings IS a choice. As for the song, I think it's interesting that he tries to feel positive about all this bad stuff, but at the end he realizes that homosexuality, drug addiction, and warmongering are destroying the American Dream. It's a sad song because it's true.