"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.
There was a time a long long time ago
Chevy's and Levi's played on the radio
No cell phones just twenty thousand lights
Swayin' on a Saturday night alright
Can you imagine that slice of time
Rock 'n roll was young, people stood in line
To hear music that played into their lives
That you could carry 'til the day you died
Hey man sing me a song
When we were everyone
We were more than just a slice
Of American Pie
Have you read my blog today
Three hundred million little USA's
Your doorstep is just a click away
We'll get together one of these days
How can you be as nice as me
You're not from the same slice as me
Where do we go from here my friend
Is this the way our story ends
Hey man sing me a song
When we were everyone
We were more than just a slice
Of American Pie
Can't stop singin' along
Can you join in, come on
Are we more than just a slice
Of American pie
We're top down lovers, it's Saturday night
The band's roarin' and it feels so right
The moon's dancin' and the stars are free
I caught your heart on a summer's breeze
Whatever was or what's meant to be
Our melodies are memories
There was a time a long long time ago
Chevy's and Levi's played on the radio
No cell phones just twenty thousand lights
Swayin' on a Saturday night alright
Hey man sing me a song
When we were everyone
We were more than just a slice
Of American Pie
I can't stop singin' along
Can you join in, come on
Are we more than just a slice
Of American pie
(American pie)
We're more than a slice
We're more than a slice
We're more than just a slice
Of American pie
Chevy's and Levi's played on the radio
No cell phones just twenty thousand lights
Swayin' on a Saturday night alright
Can you imagine that slice of time
Rock 'n roll was young, people stood in line
To hear music that played into their lives
That you could carry 'til the day you died
Hey man sing me a song
When we were everyone
We were more than just a slice
Of American Pie
Have you read my blog today
Three hundred million little USA's
Your doorstep is just a click away
We'll get together one of these days
How can you be as nice as me
You're not from the same slice as me
Where do we go from here my friend
Is this the way our story ends
Hey man sing me a song
When we were everyone
We were more than just a slice
Of American Pie
Can't stop singin' along
Can you join in, come on
Are we more than just a slice
Of American pie
We're top down lovers, it's Saturday night
The band's roarin' and it feels so right
The moon's dancin' and the stars are free
I caught your heart on a summer's breeze
Whatever was or what's meant to be
Our melodies are memories
There was a time a long long time ago
Chevy's and Levi's played on the radio
No cell phones just twenty thousand lights
Swayin' on a Saturday night alright
Hey man sing me a song
When we were everyone
We were more than just a slice
Of American Pie
I can't stop singin' along
Can you join in, come on
Are we more than just a slice
Of American pie
(American pie)
We're more than a slice
We're more than a slice
We're more than just a slice
Of American pie
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More Featured Meanings
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
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.
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.
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.
It's basically a nostalgia kick, a kind of "gosh, things sure were better back in my day" song. I hear this song at work, sometimes several times a day, and have never really been all that impressed with it. When people look back at the way things were they tend to don a pair of rose-tinted glasses and forget the problems that were there and only look at the good. A lot of the time things only seemed simpler or better, usually because at the time said person was unaware of some of the darker sides of life. Glorifying the past is something that every generation seems to do at some point, and it's usually not justified.
Fifty years ago the civil rights movement was still going on and African Americans (and other minorities) were still openly discriminated against. America was in the middle of the Vietnam War...life was not all moonbeams and sunshine, unless you were a kid too young to understand what was going on around you. It was an incendiary time in American history, a time when this nation was far more fractious than it is today...despite the song writer's belief that cell phones and blogs create division.
If anything we haven't changed at all. The only difference between people now and people than is that we have more things to lose ourselves in than they did back then. But is that really a negative thing? People are no more divisive than they were back then, we just have more way of expressing our differences.
Of course, I have no idea what part of the past the song writer is actually talking about; I took fifty years from someone else's comment and used it to show that were not as great back then as has been implied. Pick an era and I'll demonstrate that things were not as idyllic as nostalgic old timers would like us to believe.
And for the record, we have never been anything other than a slice of American pie.