"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.
I want a child that never grows
And a love that I’ll never get to own
No slow days
There’s an ever-changing past
Busy nights, the brightest lights
You get your cake and eat it too
I want to wake up to parades
Neon billboards signs
Where the colours never fade away
It’s the happiest of all memorial days
Slow retreat, fast defeat
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
I have been sleeping with the most
The velvet sheets, the fattest sheep
There’s an ever blowing cold breeze
It’s like the planet’s just for me
There’s so much earth
There’s so much ash
There’s so much sea
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
I want a child that never grows
And a love that I’ll never get to own
Those slow days
There’s an ever-changing path
Busy nights, the brightest lights
You get your cake and eat it too
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
And a love that I’ll never get to own
No slow days
There’s an ever-changing past
Busy nights, the brightest lights
You get your cake and eat it too
I want to wake up to parades
Neon billboards signs
Where the colours never fade away
It’s the happiest of all memorial days
Slow retreat, fast defeat
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
I have been sleeping with the most
The velvet sheets, the fattest sheep
There’s an ever blowing cold breeze
It’s like the planet’s just for me
There’s so much earth
There’s so much ash
There’s so much sea
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
I want a child that never grows
And a love that I’ll never get to own
Those slow days
There’s an ever-changing path
Busy nights, the brightest lights
You get your cake and eat it too
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
If you’re still alone I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
I’d like to come back home
Lyrics submitted by fendie
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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"
Blue
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. He expresses the realization that he might never find another on this stringed instrumental by Aaron Dessner.
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.
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
The writer is afraid to grow up or move on. The situation he's in now is not good, but he's too afraid that moving on will only make it worser.