"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.
Dry the flowers, file the sheet-music,
save me for the fire
I spent the day forgetting
the dream that woke me up
The garden is empty
and I still remember why
I'm so reluctant ot start it again
eternal November
shines through the marrow of me
I never was a very good fighter
they started me young
You always were the very best lover
that I couldn't love
The years they will make you a pretty good runner,
yeah I've been running around all of this time
Shot in the dark, down in the shadows
waiting for when,
yeah just waiting for when the coast is clear...
You were running around so you'd never remember this
fear lights a fire under you
And all you leave behind are the smoke and the ashes
a trail of grey and blue...
Blame me dear for any disaster,
oh how the kerosene ran dry
and we made our bed in that familiar graveyard
between the sternum and the spine
Oh darling I think that all of the answers
went south on the backs of those grey winged birds
or slipped through our finger
while we were sleeping
waiting for when,
yeah just waiting for when the coast is clear...
Along the way the light is the medecine
along the way we search for the sun
to call us down the dark corridor
back into the world....
save me for the fire
I spent the day forgetting
the dream that woke me up
The garden is empty
and I still remember why
I'm so reluctant ot start it again
eternal November
shines through the marrow of me
I never was a very good fighter
they started me young
You always were the very best lover
that I couldn't love
The years they will make you a pretty good runner,
yeah I've been running around all of this time
Shot in the dark, down in the shadows
waiting for when,
yeah just waiting for when the coast is clear...
You were running around so you'd never remember this
fear lights a fire under you
And all you leave behind are the smoke and the ashes
a trail of grey and blue...
Blame me dear for any disaster,
oh how the kerosene ran dry
and we made our bed in that familiar graveyard
between the sternum and the spine
Oh darling I think that all of the answers
went south on the backs of those grey winged birds
or slipped through our finger
while we were sleeping
waiting for when,
yeah just waiting for when the coast is clear...
Along the way the light is the medecine
along the way we search for the sun
to call us down the dark corridor
back into the world....
Lyrics submitted by Megaira
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
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Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
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This is about bronies. They communicate by stomping.
When We Were Young
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This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
No Surprises
Radiohead
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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.
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.
Memory in Chris Pureka's lyrics pull a tension between that thoracic plunge and a word I forgot which describes the asystolic offbeat, the beat between, the return, "trying to find a compromise between remembering and learning to forget" in 'So it Goes'.
I'm a long time on and off again songmeanings creeper and first time writer. and first comment for this song. I've often come here looking to others' emotional takes to decode my own compulsions and wishful thinking -interpretations- and all that is cryptic in remembering together the things we lost - the mix tapes - from relationships we couldn't recover - the data corrupted - disintegrated - fall leaves post-burst into the archival earth - something about the light and cool of November -shines through the marrow of me- is sobering and sorrow, clear, cruel, lucid, painful, confusing.
"The garden is empty and I still remember why I'm so reluctant ot start it again"
I've tried to start the garden again with others - once even to project an image of sanity to myself - why would you still think about something that is gone, why that reluctance between pleasure and pain - how fucked up am I to still hold you in my mind and heart when you were the person who held me and hurt me like none other - "you always were the very next lover that I couldn't love" - I couldn't love, you wouldn't let love, loved, or was just toyed with by your obviously superior emotional intelligence, don't worry though or gloat, I won't always be your fool.
"eternal November shines through the marrow of me" eternal as in I listen to this song all year round, bed time playlists, iPod running playlists (hitting stride with the lyric: "You were running around so you'd never remember this fear lights a fire under you")
"Blame me dear for any disaster, (you were right to run, you laid out the framework for preservation: emotional boundaries I couldn't respect) oh how the kerosene ran dry and we made our bed in that familiar graveyard between the sternum and the spine"
An interviewer once asked Chris Pureka to talk about the life-events that inspired one of Chris's albums and Chris's answer was that it was all in the lyrics - so I'm going to respect that this song is brilliant and doesn't even really need any added words and I don't want to reveal too much of what is more complex than this space allows.