"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.
The sun went down and the ground started sort
of grinding
A blinding light tore across the sky
A cyclone swept the landscape out and left it
completely flattened out
And several twirls of smoke unfolded like gigantic
flowers
The way the morning broke was quite unusual
I should have wakened up at once, but this was no
concern of mine, so I kept on dreaming
My eyes roamed over the burning ruins
In less time than it takes to tell
And I felt like
And I felt like being numbed,
I felt like mesmerized
The way the morning broke was quite unusual
More than words can say
In less time than it takes to tell
of grinding
A blinding light tore across the sky
A cyclone swept the landscape out and left it
completely flattened out
And several twirls of smoke unfolded like gigantic
flowers
The way the morning broke was quite unusual
I should have wakened up at once, but this was no
concern of mine, so I kept on dreaming
My eyes roamed over the burning ruins
In less time than it takes to tell
And I felt like
And I felt like being numbed,
I felt like mesmerized
The way the morning broke was quite unusual
More than words can say
In less time than it takes to tell
Lyrics submitted by iconnu
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Fast Car
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This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
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What I feel and always thought was that this song is about dreaming in ways.
The way the morning broke was quite unusual
That weird, strange feeling you get when you wake up from a strange dream that you can't stop thinking about and doesn't make much sense but its stuck in your brain. Its with you for the better part of the day.
In less time than it takes to tell
You know there's a point or a conclusion but you just can't find it.
I should have wakened up at once, But this was no concern of mine, So I kept on dreaming
Might have been better if you did just wake and won't.
And I felt like And I felt like being numbed, I felt like mesmerized
Waking up and trying to hard to fool yourself that you can fall back asleep and continue the dream....to either figure it out or to enjoy it.
The rest I believe is part of the lyric writers personal dreams.
This is my interpretation of the song and I'm sticking with it. It's what it means to me. I could be wrong by the writer but its mine.