"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.
A man in a red coat straddled the shoulder
Off the street to vanish into a cloud
Looking up between his arms he saw the sidewalk
Floundering lustily around
He followed his eyelids up the stairs and
Turned and stared at a lustered pound
That gave him as a reply a jellied smile from its
Green and wide mouth
As he passed the door he rolled his eyes
He was galvanized through the phone and
Understood the crackle of typewriters,
Phonographs and heliophones
But it was Sunday and walking and talking
- It's all the same- he could've been (...)
He came here for a lady while the sun & the wind were
Walking and talking,
Walking and talking
The light snuggles a substance
Like a worm in Vatican
Set at a radio broadcast that long ago began
The sound dropped him earlier from somewhere
This time
The saxophone fish musicians were
Unfair
Then nightfall, my dear, flung his gambling limbs
Along the street to here
Though the walls were all of concrete
He could by a simple pressure of his teeth
Break the tender mechanism which sustained them
And dropped a powdered smile
Thus was he welcomed, thus were his feet
Bathed to be roared back in scream
Then he knew that she would stalk maybe scrap him
And by orchids sing about it
He became 1, 2, 3, wobbling dishes for her
Gentle guests, his friends and enemies
But it was Sunday and at a quiet terrace
He could have been seated and talking
And at nightfall he shuddered,
The horror of that dusk
The eyes shut,
Standing
Off the street to vanish into a cloud
Looking up between his arms he saw the sidewalk
Floundering lustily around
He followed his eyelids up the stairs and
Turned and stared at a lustered pound
That gave him as a reply a jellied smile from its
Green and wide mouth
As he passed the door he rolled his eyes
He was galvanized through the phone and
Understood the crackle of typewriters,
Phonographs and heliophones
But it was Sunday and walking and talking
- It's all the same- he could've been (...)
He came here for a lady while the sun & the wind were
Walking and talking,
Walking and talking
The light snuggles a substance
Like a worm in Vatican
Set at a radio broadcast that long ago began
The sound dropped him earlier from somewhere
This time
The saxophone fish musicians were
Unfair
Then nightfall, my dear, flung his gambling limbs
Along the street to here
Though the walls were all of concrete
He could by a simple pressure of his teeth
Break the tender mechanism which sustained them
And dropped a powdered smile
Thus was he welcomed, thus were his feet
Bathed to be roared back in scream
Then he knew that she would stalk maybe scrap him
And by orchids sing about it
He became 1, 2, 3, wobbling dishes for her
Gentle guests, his friends and enemies
But it was Sunday and at a quiet terrace
He could have been seated and talking
And at nightfall he shuddered,
The horror of that dusk
The eyes shut,
Standing
Lyrics submitted by Onimarus
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