"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.
Mild apprehension
Blank dreams of the coming fun
Distort the odds of a turnaround
Gut screams out next to none
So turn it on
Tune it in
And stay inert
You say "I've got the backbone"
The back way to escape the gun
Climbing a tree with a missing limb
And not saving anyone
And now it hurts
To stay at home
And see
Flash
The mirror ball's throwing mold
You can't get a grip if there's nothing to hold
See the flash catch a white lily laugh and wilt
But if you must smash a glass first fill it to the hilt
Plants
As far as I know are still
Still bending toward the light
And if we dance
Until the heart explodes
It'll make this place ignite
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope it's just
A case of flash delirium
Here's a growing culture
Deep inside a corpse
Ages stuck together
Takin' it to the source
Timeless desperation
Pictures on a screen scream
"Hey people, what does it mean?"
Comfort keeps us nice
So quick to donate everything (nothing arrives)
Die wolken drifting blinding smiles circling (einkreisen)
And time's tingling spines
Attaching hands to floor
The rosy-tinted flash
The hot dog's getting cold
And you'll never be as good as the Rolling Stones
Watch the birds in the airport gathering dirt
Crowd the clean magazine chick lifting up her skirt
(Why close one eye and try to
Pledge allegiance to the sun
When plastic ghosts start terrorizing everyone
Geometric troops aligning
Carried up to the burial mounds
My earthbound heart is heavy
Your heartbeat keeps things light
Like the violence forever threatening the night
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope and trust)
Lines when I close my eyes and just
Aim blindly at the sun
And hear love
When the ghosts start singing terrorizing everyone
Geometric troops aligning
Carried up to the burial mounds with gold
It's a heavy load but your
You rhythm makes it light and explode
Like a violent star keeps threatening the night
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope and trust
That our heads won't bust
Sixty six fifty five red battleships
Forty earth-like planets
Three holes two tits
One fork in its side
Zero tears in their eyes
Sue the spiders
Sink the Welsh
Stab your Facebook
Sell sell sell
Undercooked
Overdone
Mass adulation not so funny
Poisoned honey
Pseudo science
Silly money
You're my honey
Blank dreams of the coming fun
Distort the odds of a turnaround
Gut screams out next to none
So turn it on
Tune it in
And stay inert
You say "I've got the backbone"
The back way to escape the gun
Climbing a tree with a missing limb
And not saving anyone
And now it hurts
To stay at home
And see
Flash
The mirror ball's throwing mold
You can't get a grip if there's nothing to hold
See the flash catch a white lily laugh and wilt
But if you must smash a glass first fill it to the hilt
Plants
As far as I know are still
Still bending toward the light
And if we dance
Until the heart explodes
It'll make this place ignite
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope it's just
A case of flash delirium
Here's a growing culture
Deep inside a corpse
Ages stuck together
Takin' it to the source
Timeless desperation
Pictures on a screen scream
"Hey people, what does it mean?"
Comfort keeps us nice
So quick to donate everything (nothing arrives)
Die wolken drifting blinding smiles circling (einkreisen)
And time's tingling spines
Attaching hands to floor
The rosy-tinted flash
The hot dog's getting cold
And you'll never be as good as the Rolling Stones
Watch the birds in the airport gathering dirt
Crowd the clean magazine chick lifting up her skirt
(Why close one eye and try to
Pledge allegiance to the sun
When plastic ghosts start terrorizing everyone
Geometric troops aligning
Carried up to the burial mounds
My earthbound heart is heavy
Your heartbeat keeps things light
Like the violence forever threatening the night
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope and trust)
Lines when I close my eyes and just
Aim blindly at the sun
And hear love
When the ghosts start singing terrorizing everyone
Geometric troops aligning
Carried up to the burial mounds with gold
It's a heavy load but your
You rhythm makes it light and explode
Like a violent star keeps threatening the night
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope and trust
That our heads won't bust
Sixty six fifty five red battleships
Forty earth-like planets
Three holes two tits
One fork in its side
Zero tears in their eyes
Sue the spiders
Sink the Welsh
Stab your Facebook
Sell sell sell
Undercooked
Overdone
Mass adulation not so funny
Poisoned honey
Pseudo science
Silly money
You're my honey
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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"
Dreamwalker
Silent Planet
Silent Planet
I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
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."
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."
'here's a growing culture deep inside a corpse ages stuck together takin it to the source timeless desperation pictures on a screen scream "hey people, what does it mean?"'
I feel this has a lot of correlation to "stab your facebook". Though, maybe I'm just reading into that because of my obsession lately with Facebook killing this Generation.
"here's a growing culture deep inside a corpse"
Culture is growing more and more into Facebook and social networking, but it is actually a corpse of socialising, as you miss out more and more on life experiences.
'pictures on a screen scream "hey people, what does it mean?"'
It is all pointless. What does all these status updates mean in the long run? Stab your Facebook.
don't read this one read the other one -- copy/paste error