"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.
Garage sale, Saturday
I need to pay
My heart's outstanding bills
A cracked-up compass and a pocket watch
Some plastic daffodils
The cutlery and coffee cups I stole from all-night restaurants
A sense of wonder only slightly used
A year or two to haunt you in the dark
For a phone call from far away
With a "Hi, how are you today?"
And a sign, "Recovery comes to the broken ones"
Wage slave forty-hour work week weighs
A thousand kilograms
So bend your knees, comes with a free fake smile
For all your dumb demands
The cordless razor that my father bought
When I turned 17
The puke-green sofa, and the outline too
A complicated dream of dignity
For a laugh, too loud and too long
Or a place where awkward belong
And a sign, "Recovery comes to the broken ones"
To the broken ones
To the broken ones
For the broken ones
Or best offer
I need to pay
My heart's outstanding bills
A cracked-up compass and a pocket watch
Some plastic daffodils
The cutlery and coffee cups I stole from all-night restaurants
A sense of wonder only slightly used
A year or two to haunt you in the dark
For a phone call from far away
With a "Hi, how are you today?"
And a sign, "Recovery comes to the broken ones"
Wage slave forty-hour work week weighs
A thousand kilograms
So bend your knees, comes with a free fake smile
For all your dumb demands
The cordless razor that my father bought
When I turned 17
The puke-green sofa, and the outline too
A complicated dream of dignity
For a laugh, too loud and too long
Or a place where awkward belong
And a sign, "Recovery comes to the broken ones"
To the broken ones
To the broken ones
For the broken ones
Or best offer
Lyrics submitted by oofus, edited by replicantd, eunoia, sterilelikealineofpiss, maccrash21, valprehension
Everything Must Go Lyrics as written by Stephen Carroll John K Samson
Lyrics © MOTHERSHIP MUSIC PUBLISHING
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Fast Car
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I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
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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,
Punchline
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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
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“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.
This song is so beautiful. It's sung in such a fragile way, (although you could say that about many of Samson's songs) which links up perfectly with the regretful, nervous narrator. He's holding a garage sale, he says, to pay his "HEART'S outstanding bills". This, just like the first couple lines in the next track, "Aside", essentially set up the action in the proceeding lines. All of this clutter has accumulated "sentimental value", a phrase I think holds a similar double entendre to the one presented here. It isn't just STUFF- everything has significance beyond what's implied in a physical description of it (even human beings, who have all of this beautiful internal detail at their command, who have beliefs, memories, etc.). So, "A cracked up compass and a pocket watch" suggests a directionless, wandering state and wasted time. The compass is broken and he is giving up his old timepiece, the latter's it's outmoded form- meaning, it's not a watch or even a clock- especially underscoring it's uselessness. Additionally, I think, his desire to get rid of his "pocket watch" expresses a desire for change, to literally live within the hours and minutes of a new life. "Some plastic daffodils" is one that impresses me as being very subtle. While daffodils represent beauty, they are inorganic, they are not real and pretty tacky. I think these represent our tendency to fall in love with things that we regret loving later on in life- women, art, or tacky decorative "plastic daffodils". By selling off "Cutlery and coffee cups (he) stole from all-night restaurants", he is at once suggesting a state of poverty, of impermanence (if you don't buy nice things, you are just using them temporarily- you aren't home-making), and ALSO, by pointing to the "ALL-NIGHT restaurants", hinting at lonely nights spent drinking coffee and brooding ("All-night restaurant North Kildonan/ lukewarm coffee tastes like soap/ I trace your outline in spilled sugar/ killing time and killing hope" - "None of the Above" from "Fallow"). God damn. I could go on forever but it would belabor the point. Just wanted to point out the double entendre upon which the whole song is based, and that, by selling these things that have basically come to symbolize his life, he is looking for acceptance, for "a place where akward belongs", and "a sign recovery comes to the broken ones". He's willing to let them go because, he reasons, if people will buy his possessions despite their shoddy quality, then maybe someone will love him. JKS is the most underrated songwriter today- how can anyone not be moved to tears by this? And this isn't even the best song on this album. Hope this helps some people.