"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.
[Conscience]
Goodbye
Your pocket full of dreams
Your mind in a daze
Keep on chasing rainbows
Fly high
Leave the past behind
The dark road you take bears no escape
[Mephistopheles]
In a world of grand illusions
Where love is just a dream
You gotta make your sacrifices
Time to pick your poison
The fool is he who is noble-minded
And bellies up to poverty
He's not a king in the world of diamonds
Paling into oblivion
[Scarecrow]
I lay down my soul for glory
I've given a life away
Don't know if I am sorry
Blind me, blind me
Don't know where I'll be going
I gotta get away
From the pain of recollection
Drawn into the faint
[All]
Hang on to a runaway train
No turning back
Tethered to a runaway train
Take me away
Torpid in the wind and rain
No turning back
Hang on to a runaway train
Take me away
[Scarecrow]
If I'm a stranger to myself
Then I better gotta stay away
Even better gotta get away, get away
Time to pick my poison
Feel the devil sitting in my neck
Straight ahead into the unknown
Oh father I forgive you for I
Don't know what I'm doing
[Mephistopheles]
It's only human nature
To keep away from pain
Take a train to ecstasy oh
Ride on, ride on
Inhale the scent of heaven
Respire the smell of fame
You've been to hell and back
You can't change things anyway, no
[Scarecrow]
I hang on to a runaway train
No turning back
Tethered to a runaway train
Take me away
Torpid in the wind and rain
No turning back
I hang on to a runaway train
Take me away
[Mentor]
Reaching out to rule the world
you'll watch the mirror shatter
As you'll be dazzled by the sight
Once only diamonds mattered
How can you justify the way
When you wake up screaming
Will you pretend that you were blind
When you were really seeing
Your image everywhere
The looking glass: a sheet of ice
It's thick enough to dance on
In a frozen realm of lies
But the ice will break
And you will scream repenting
Oh boy, the ice will break
You'll just feel your heart rending
[Scarecrow]
Riding on to a world of funny flowers
Riding on to the white wide world
If coming back would hurt my pride
I'd rather take another ride
Riding on, winter on the mirror
Riding on into the unknown
If I'll awake in pain one day
I've gotta catch just one more train
[Conscience]
Days gone by
Who'd wanna live forever
On our knees up your road
Paved with good intentions
Fly high
Where angels can't breathe no more
Some dare to go blind
Some stay behind
[Scarecrow]
I hang on to a runaway train
No turning back
Tethered to a runaway train
Take me away
Torpid in the wind and rain
No turning back
I hang on to a runaway train
Take me away
Hang on to a runaway train
No turning back
Tethered to a runaway train
Take me away
Torpid in the wind and rain
in the wind and rain
I hang on to that runaway train
Goodbye
Your pocket full of dreams
Your mind in a daze
Keep on chasing rainbows
Fly high
Leave the past behind
The dark road you take bears no escape
[Mephistopheles]
In a world of grand illusions
Where love is just a dream
You gotta make your sacrifices
Time to pick your poison
The fool is he who is noble-minded
And bellies up to poverty
He's not a king in the world of diamonds
Paling into oblivion
[Scarecrow]
I lay down my soul for glory
I've given a life away
Don't know if I am sorry
Blind me, blind me
Don't know where I'll be going
I gotta get away
From the pain of recollection
Drawn into the faint
[All]
Hang on to a runaway train
No turning back
Tethered to a runaway train
Take me away
Torpid in the wind and rain
No turning back
Hang on to a runaway train
Take me away
[Scarecrow]
If I'm a stranger to myself
Then I better gotta stay away
Even better gotta get away, get away
Time to pick my poison
Feel the devil sitting in my neck
Straight ahead into the unknown
Oh father I forgive you for I
Don't know what I'm doing
[Mephistopheles]
It's only human nature
To keep away from pain
Take a train to ecstasy oh
Ride on, ride on
Inhale the scent of heaven
Respire the smell of fame
You've been to hell and back
You can't change things anyway, no
[Scarecrow]
I hang on to a runaway train
No turning back
Tethered to a runaway train
Take me away
Torpid in the wind and rain
No turning back
I hang on to a runaway train
Take me away
[Mentor]
Reaching out to rule the world
you'll watch the mirror shatter
As you'll be dazzled by the sight
Once only diamonds mattered
How can you justify the way
When you wake up screaming
Will you pretend that you were blind
When you were really seeing
Your image everywhere
The looking glass: a sheet of ice
It's thick enough to dance on
In a frozen realm of lies
But the ice will break
And you will scream repenting
Oh boy, the ice will break
You'll just feel your heart rending
[Scarecrow]
Riding on to a world of funny flowers
Riding on to the white wide world
If coming back would hurt my pride
I'd rather take another ride
Riding on, winter on the mirror
Riding on into the unknown
If I'll awake in pain one day
I've gotta catch just one more train
[Conscience]
Days gone by
Who'd wanna live forever
On our knees up your road
Paved with good intentions
Fly high
Where angels can't breathe no more
Some dare to go blind
Some stay behind
[Scarecrow]
I hang on to a runaway train
No turning back
Tethered to a runaway train
Take me away
Torpid in the wind and rain
No turning back
I hang on to a runaway train
Take me away
Hang on to a runaway train
No turning back
Tethered to a runaway train
Take me away
Torpid in the wind and rain
in the wind and rain
I hang on to that runaway train
Lyrics submitted by 2006200720082009, edited by Zamochy
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
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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"
Cajun Girl
Little Feat
Little Feat
Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
Punchline
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.
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.
The basis of the Wicked Trilogy album is about music composer dubbed The Scarecrow (Tobias Sammet) slowly going insane. His insanity births Mephistopheles (Jorn Lande) in his mind, and he falls into depression after being rejected by his unrequited love (Amanda Somerville). Tobi wrote this trilogy so The Scarecrows teeters between reality and illusions; that line being clearer in some songs more than others.
This song is about The Scarecrow listening to Mephistopheles and deciding to fall into addiction to escape his pain. This is explained in lines like:
The "runaway train" is meant to represent how The Scarecrow is ready to give up his self-control and spiral out of control in order to drown everything out. Lines such as:
"Take a train to ecstasy"
"If coming back would hurt my pride, I'd rather take another ride"
"If I'll awake in pain one day, I've gotta catch just one more train"
As well as the chorus, further reinforce this analogy.
While it's unclear if the Mentor is real or a hallucination, his lines talk about how one day The Scarecrow will sober up and realize all the horrible things he's done, and once that happens he'll "scream repenting".
I personally reckon this song is about dreams. How you can not control what happens in the realm of dreams.
One nice girl told me once that to her this seems to be about heroin, or drug addiction in general. I think she was quite right. If you read the lyrics, it seems to be pretty clear.
No disrespect, but I can't relate to that at all. I'll admit that a couple of lines could be used to reference heroine easily (use of words like white and snow generally) but thats just a small part of the song as a whole.<br /> <br /> I see the song more of as someone who has to make a choice and wondering which one to take, the paths being living in a world of illusions or accepting that reality isn't just sweet but also a bitter fact of life.
Unlike Avantasia's first set of Albums ( The Metal Opera and The Metal Opera II) The Wicked Trilogy (The Scarecrow, The Wicked Symphony and Angel of Babylon) are not a direct story. They are intentionally left open and vague. The booklet from Wicked Symphony states:
"It's a tragedy about getting caught between two worlds. Here are the good intentions, visions, the dream of creating something divine and pure that is meant to result in love. And there you've got the demons that go along with the acclaim and approval that all of us vain and proud creatures mistakenly might call love sometimes...The scarecrow is you, the scarecrow is me..."
I think this song is part of that- If you look at the albums together with "Scarecrow" telling the actual story, while the second two tell the characters emotional journey I think Runaway train is about what is dubbed "the scarecrow" deciding to turn away from the woman who he loved and who ultimately rejected him in search of other forms of fulfillment beyond the love of a single woman.