"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.
For too long I paid lipservice to liberation
Let my young self be subsumed in our relations
Don't think for a moment I don't take responsibility
But you have to agree it was time I set myself free
Is it wrong to distill what we had for so many years
Down to the worst of us both, all of our violence and tears
Tell me what hurts and hate me for wanting it anyway
Love has driven me from you and fear won't make me stay
I have stared down the face of death
Burned my idols till nothing was left
If you tried to see through my eyes
You would know this is how I'll survive, the only way I can survive
You think I sacrificed happiness for pleasures trivial
I repeat my mantra no regrets so someday it will feel real
I am alone, there is no freedom from
I begged borrowed and stole, escaped your rubber room
Blame me for what you can
You are a shell of a man
Tell all my friends I've gone mad
Everything I could've wanted, I had
But survival isn't just for the body
It's for what will be left of me
All the ways you say I'm crazy
They form my legacy
You think I sacrificed happiness for pleasures trivial
I repeat my mantra no regrets so someday it will feel real
I am alone with my freedom to
I lied cheated and stole to get away from you
I am alone, wide skies above me
This city's all mine, and no one to love me
I am alone unprotected from my worst self
No freedom from but I have no regrets
I am alone, wide skies above,
This city's all mine, and no one to love
Let my young self be subsumed in our relations
Don't think for a moment I don't take responsibility
But you have to agree it was time I set myself free
Is it wrong to distill what we had for so many years
Down to the worst of us both, all of our violence and tears
Tell me what hurts and hate me for wanting it anyway
Love has driven me from you and fear won't make me stay
I have stared down the face of death
Burned my idols till nothing was left
If you tried to see through my eyes
You would know this is how I'll survive, the only way I can survive
You think I sacrificed happiness for pleasures trivial
I repeat my mantra no regrets so someday it will feel real
I am alone, there is no freedom from
I begged borrowed and stole, escaped your rubber room
Blame me for what you can
You are a shell of a man
Tell all my friends I've gone mad
Everything I could've wanted, I had
But survival isn't just for the body
It's for what will be left of me
All the ways you say I'm crazy
They form my legacy
You think I sacrificed happiness for pleasures trivial
I repeat my mantra no regrets so someday it will feel real
I am alone with my freedom to
I lied cheated and stole to get away from you
I am alone, wide skies above me
This city's all mine, and no one to love me
I am alone unprotected from my worst self
No freedom from but I have no regrets
I am alone, wide skies above,
This city's all mine, and no one to love
Lyrics submitted by hersoftestsoul
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