"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.
Heading death
Feeling ungodly
Searching for the melancholy
Time will tell
What's to come?
Tear down the sky
Worship sun
Calling out to some holy host
Exercise my holy ghost
Dream within
Dream on the doubt
Don't ever let the dream die out
What went wrong before?
Was I hit this shit looking for loyalty
So air your grievance fuck!
Check it out
It's a charmed life
On the chopping block
I'm gonna live until I die
Check it out
It's a charmed life
On the chopping block
You better live until you die
Blood was spilt
Through the words that kill
They're meant for you
So bet it all
War with wolves
A war of words
Meant for you
So bet it all
Calling out to some holy host
Exercise my holy ghost
Dream within
Dream or the doubt
Don't ever let the dream die!
What went wrong before?
Was I hit this shit looking for loyalty
So air your grievance fuck!
Check it out
It's a charmed life
On the chopping block
I'm gonna live until I die
Check it out
It's your charmed life
On the chopping block
You better live until you die
Blood was spilt
On the chopping block
Your charmed life so live until you die
Charmed life is on the chopping block
It's a charmed life
I'm gonna live until I die
I got you out of my life
That was the dream
It's your waking reality!
I got you out of my life
It's your waking reality
You lose the fame!
You lose the fame!
It's your waking reality
It's a war with words
Call it like I see it
The stench stains my veins
Check it out
It's a charmed life
On the chopping block
I'm gonna live until I die
Check out
It's your charmed life
On the chopping block
You better live until you die
Blood was spilt
On the chopping block
Your charmed life so live until you die
Charmed life is on the chopping block
It's a charmed life
I'm gonna live until I die
Feeling ungodly
Searching for the melancholy
Time will tell
What's to come?
Tear down the sky
Worship sun
Calling out to some holy host
Exercise my holy ghost
Dream within
Dream on the doubt
Don't ever let the dream die out
What went wrong before?
Was I hit this shit looking for loyalty
So air your grievance fuck!
Check it out
It's a charmed life
On the chopping block
I'm gonna live until I die
Check it out
It's a charmed life
On the chopping block
You better live until you die
Blood was spilt
Through the words that kill
They're meant for you
So bet it all
War with wolves
A war of words
Meant for you
So bet it all
Calling out to some holy host
Exercise my holy ghost
Dream within
Dream or the doubt
Don't ever let the dream die!
What went wrong before?
Was I hit this shit looking for loyalty
So air your grievance fuck!
Check it out
It's a charmed life
On the chopping block
I'm gonna live until I die
Check it out
It's your charmed life
On the chopping block
You better live until you die
Blood was spilt
On the chopping block
Your charmed life so live until you die
Charmed life is on the chopping block
It's a charmed life
I'm gonna live until I die
I got you out of my life
That was the dream
It's your waking reality!
I got you out of my life
It's your waking reality
You lose the fame!
You lose the fame!
It's your waking reality
It's a war with words
Call it like I see it
The stench stains my veins
Check it out
It's a charmed life
On the chopping block
I'm gonna live until I die
Check out
It's your charmed life
On the chopping block
You better live until you die
Blood was spilt
On the chopping block
Your charmed life so live until you die
Charmed life is on the chopping block
It's a charmed life
I'm gonna live until I die
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It took me a while to figure out what the heck "What went wrong before? Was I hit this shit looking for loyalty." Dez is a brilliant writer and has written some of my favorite lyrics of all time, but the way the lines are structured in the liner notes usually confuse me. It's customary to separate lines roughly as the measures and bars dictate. But the liner notes sometimes seem to break lines in random places, and add punctuation where it doesn't necessarily fir grammatically. Still, it's usually not to hard to figure out what the lyricist was trying to say in those cases.
I kept thinking the liner notes must be wrong because the aforementioned line just doesn't make sense, grammatically or otherwise. Finally it dawned on me.
"What went wrong before was I hit this shit looking for loyalty." There's a question mark in there which breaks the sentence and makes the line not make logical sense. The question mark should be there (I didn't change it because that's how it's written in the liner notes.) Put another way, he's saying "Things went wrong in the past, and things went wrong because I "hit this shit" or "came into this situation," looking for loyalty, which was a mistake."
This definitely tracks with the main theme of 'Trust No One' as he's basically saying, "don't go into anything expecting loyalty because you'll likely get fucked in the end."
@sinrise edit: "..the question mark should NOT be there."