The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
They want to hear good freestyling with sarcasm of Woody Allen
Their parents own oil rigs
They're just some spoiled kids who I must aim to please
And so I'm dipped in a syrup vat
And you know this town is a tourist trap
Run by entertainment industries and the bureaucrats
Selling the ultimate brain freeze
This year I'm Sambo
I'm on the Clear Channel
I'm smiling and reading my parchment of prose
I talk of the common man and of the promised land
But I'm insincere and make the Marxists doze
My head was a jar of lit bulbs
I used to make viewers carsick at shows
But now I'm easily the most compromising slut
Oh, it's hard to keep this harlot clothed
I network and do more than schmooze
I start licking toes
Underground rappers smell like garlic cloves
But me, I'm smug and decadent
Paid obscenely to appear at a set event
Companies license my likeliness
Money, it heightens my flighty fits
I wrote the great American pop song stylized to my respective tiny niche
I wasn't invited to your shindig
I've got no plus one and a low slush fund
I never expected to ever win big
I never expected for you to open my press kit
The attendance is always subpar when I perform at a club or bar
Why did I choose to do weird shit
I steered my career off a cliff in a flaming stunt car
So now I'm falling down a bottomless pit
But I'm trying to be optimistic
I spin microwaveable plates
But the label prorates nothing
My arms are to cotton pick with
Look at the poignant portraits in my doodle sketch
Meaning and art exude with every brush stroke
But my promises of revolution are futile threats
I'm so over sensitive my crotch is bloodsoaked
I'll African dance and cast a voodoo hex while in your dorm spilling all the bong water
And count the stars in the nebula until a goggleplex while selling you sticks of nag champa
I dumbfound in the coffee shop
Looking like Jean-Michel Basquiat
And kill gaudy pop with dirty laundry smell
Acting all foolhardy
Leaving kids oddly distraught
Gentle laughter when I'm telling jokes at your dead pool party
I am a necromancer of an exquisite corpse
I'll cry ten minutes in your wet tennis court because I wasn't invited
Their parents own oil rigs
They're just some spoiled kids who I must aim to please
And so I'm dipped in a syrup vat
And you know this town is a tourist trap
Run by entertainment industries and the bureaucrats
Selling the ultimate brain freeze
This year I'm Sambo
I'm on the Clear Channel
I'm smiling and reading my parchment of prose
I talk of the common man and of the promised land
But I'm insincere and make the Marxists doze
My head was a jar of lit bulbs
I used to make viewers carsick at shows
But now I'm easily the most compromising slut
Oh, it's hard to keep this harlot clothed
I network and do more than schmooze
I start licking toes
Underground rappers smell like garlic cloves
But me, I'm smug and decadent
Paid obscenely to appear at a set event
Companies license my likeliness
Money, it heightens my flighty fits
I wrote the great American pop song stylized to my respective tiny niche
I wasn't invited to your shindig
I've got no plus one and a low slush fund
I never expected to ever win big
I never expected for you to open my press kit
The attendance is always subpar when I perform at a club or bar
Why did I choose to do weird shit
I steered my career off a cliff in a flaming stunt car
So now I'm falling down a bottomless pit
But I'm trying to be optimistic
I spin microwaveable plates
But the label prorates nothing
My arms are to cotton pick with
Look at the poignant portraits in my doodle sketch
Meaning and art exude with every brush stroke
But my promises of revolution are futile threats
I'm so over sensitive my crotch is bloodsoaked
I'll African dance and cast a voodoo hex while in your dorm spilling all the bong water
And count the stars in the nebula until a goggleplex while selling you sticks of nag champa
I dumbfound in the coffee shop
Looking like Jean-Michel Basquiat
And kill gaudy pop with dirty laundry smell
Acting all foolhardy
Leaving kids oddly distraught
Gentle laughter when I'm telling jokes at your dead pool party
I am a necromancer of an exquisite corpse
I'll cry ten minutes in your wet tennis court because I wasn't invited
Lyrics submitted by Mellow_Harsher
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Light Up The Sky
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Fast Car
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"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.
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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"
Holiday
Bee Gees
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@[Diderik:33655] "Your a holiday!" Was a popular term used in the 50s/60s to compliment someone on their all around. For example, not only are they beautiful, but they are fun and kind too ... just an all around "holiday".
I think your first comment is closer to being accurate. The singer/song writers state "Millions of eyes can see, yet why am i so blind!? When the someone else is me, its unkind its unkind". I believe hes referring to the girl toying with him and using him. He wants something deeper with her, thats why he allows himself to be as a puppet (even though for her fun and games) as long as it makes her happy. But he knows deep down that she doesnt really want to be serious with him and thats what makes him.
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.