"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.
Where are you now?
Broken up or still around?
The CIA says you're a guilty man
Will we see the likes of you again?
Can anyone make a difference anymore?
Can anyone write a protest song?
Pinky lefty revolutionary
Burnt at the stake for
A voice so pure, a vision so clear
I've got to learn to live like you
Learn to sing like you
Went to Cuba to meet Castro
Never got past sleepy Moscow
A giant man with a heavenly voice
MK Ultra turned you paranoid
No passport 'til 1958
McCarthy poisoned through with hate
Liberty lost still buried today
Beneath the lie of the USA
Say what you want
Say what you want
A voice so pure, a vision so clear
I've got to learn to live like you
Learn to sing like you
"Now let the Freedom Train come zooming down the track
Gleaming in the sunlight for white and black
Not stopping at no stations marked coloured nor white
Just stopping in the fields in the broad daylight
Stopping in the country in the wide open air
Where there never was a Jim Crow sign nowhere
And no lilly-white committees, politicians of note
Nor poll tax layer through which coloured can't vote
And there won't be no kinda colour lines
The Freedom Train will be yours
And mine"
A voice so pure, a vision so clear
I've got to learn to live like you
Learn to sing like you
Sing it loud, sing it proud
I will be here, I will be found
Sing it loud, sing it proud
I will be here, I will be found
Broken up or still around?
The CIA says you're a guilty man
Will we see the likes of you again?
Can anyone make a difference anymore?
Can anyone write a protest song?
Pinky lefty revolutionary
Burnt at the stake for
A voice so pure, a vision so clear
I've got to learn to live like you
Learn to sing like you
Went to Cuba to meet Castro
Never got past sleepy Moscow
A giant man with a heavenly voice
MK Ultra turned you paranoid
No passport 'til 1958
McCarthy poisoned through with hate
Liberty lost still buried today
Beneath the lie of the USA
Say what you want
Say what you want
A voice so pure, a vision so clear
I've got to learn to live like you
Learn to sing like you
"Now let the Freedom Train come zooming down the track
Gleaming in the sunlight for white and black
Not stopping at no stations marked coloured nor white
Just stopping in the fields in the broad daylight
Stopping in the country in the wide open air
Where there never was a Jim Crow sign nowhere
And no lilly-white committees, politicians of note
Nor poll tax layer through which coloured can't vote
And there won't be no kinda colour lines
The Freedom Train will be yours
And mine"
A voice so pure, a vision so clear
I've got to learn to live like you
Learn to sing like you
Sing it loud, sing it proud
I will be here, I will be found
Sing it loud, sing it proud
I will be here, I will be found
Lyrics submitted by angelgarbage
Let Robeson Sing Lyrics as written by Nicholas Jones James Bradfield
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Fast Car
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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"
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This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Just A Little Lovin'
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I don't think it's necessarily about sex. It's about wanting to start the day with some love and affection. Maybe a warm cuddle. I'm not alone in interpreting it that way! For example:
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Head > Heels
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“Head > Heels” is a track that aims to capture what it feels like to experience romance that exceeds expectations. Ed Sheeran dedicates his album outro to a lover who has blessed him with a unique experience that he seeks to describe through the song’s nuanced lyrics.
"But the 'Went to Cuba to meet Castro' has nothing to do with robeson"
Went to Cuba to meet Castro, never got past sleepy Moscow. Did he intend to go to Cuba, at some point?. I always assumed that was the link?