"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.
Here shall we live in this terrible town
Where the price for our minds
shall squeeze them tight like a fist
And the walls shall have eyes
And the doors shall have ears
But we'll dance in their dark
And they'll play with our lives
Like a Slow Burn
Leading us on and on and on
Like a Slow Burn
Turning us round and round and round Hark who are we
So small in times such as these
Slow Burn
Slow Burn
Oh, these are the days
These are the strangest of all
These are the nights
These are the darkest to fall
But who knows?
Echoes in tenement halls
Who knows?
Though the years spare them all
Like a Slow Burn
Leading us on and on and on
Like a Slow Burn
Twirling us round and round
and upside down
There's fear overhead
There's fear overground
Slow Burn
Slow Burn
Like a Slow Burn
Leading us on and on and on
Like a Slow Burn
Turning us round and round and
'Round And here are we
At the center of it all
Slow Burn
Slow Burn
Slow Burn
Where the price for our minds
shall squeeze them tight like a fist
And the walls shall have eyes
And the doors shall have ears
But we'll dance in their dark
And they'll play with our lives
Like a Slow Burn
Leading us on and on and on
Like a Slow Burn
Turning us round and round and round Hark who are we
So small in times such as these
Slow Burn
Slow Burn
Oh, these are the days
These are the strangest of all
These are the nights
These are the darkest to fall
But who knows?
Echoes in tenement halls
Who knows?
Though the years spare them all
Like a Slow Burn
Leading us on and on and on
Like a Slow Burn
Twirling us round and round
and upside down
There's fear overhead
There's fear overground
Slow Burn
Slow Burn
Like a Slow Burn
Leading us on and on and on
Like a Slow Burn
Turning us round and round and
'Round And here are we
At the center of it all
Slow Burn
Slow Burn
Slow Burn
Lyrics submitted by AgathaKavka, edited by millivanilliscoop, Illtaketheleftone
Slow Burn Lyrics as written by David Bowie
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
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"
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"
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This is about bronies. They communicate by stomping.
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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.
Page
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There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
This isone of those songs that can knock the wind right out of you. Bowie kills me.
Pete Townhend payes guitar on this song... how cool is that? RUN RUN RUN GO! buy Heathen RIGHT NOW!!! This CD is Perfect!
But we'll dance in the dark Bowie is encouraging all of us that feel different to keep on going
This song is very profetic. Bowie explains how the wall have eyes and the doors have ears. I think this refers to the tightening of security and how our privacy will no longer exist. It also seems that David is trying to say that these are strange and dark days. The darkest days are yet to come. Does David have ESP or is he possesed by Demons? How does he know this stuff?
heathen was an AWSOME cd, and slow burn was definitely one of the best songs on it. :)
I think this song is about New York, where Bowie lived.
New York attracts people who are chasing dreams. For many, this means living shoulder-to-shoulder in "tenement halls", working a lot to make ends meet, while trying desperately to remember the dream that brought them there. And this can go on and on for years or decades, while your friends back home age and get married and move on, but the dream keeps you hanging on. That's the slow burn.
"Here are we, at the center of it all" (NY is the center of the world in many minds) "Where the price for our minds shall squeeze them tight like a fist" - the cost of living keeps you tense "But we'll dance in their dark and they'll play with our lives" - "They" might be the landlords, the wallstreet brokers, the wealthy powers all around that seem to own the city, the building, the museum, the cultural institutions... It's their town, we're living in it, and they play with our lives.
Bowie was probably wealthy enough to avoid some of the pitfalls described in the song, but maybe absorbed the atmosphere of the city and the feelings of the people around him. I think this does a great job of capturing the exhaustion and stress of living in that city for many people. As a former resident myself, this resonated.
This isone of those songs that can knock the wind right out of you. Bowie kills me.
Pete Townhend payes guitar on this song... how cool is that? RUN RUN RUN GO! buy Heathen RIGHT NOW!!! This CD is Perfect!
heathen's cover has Bowie holding a child while walking through what looks like a desert.Apart from this being an extremely striking image,me thinks it potrays the persona of the song fleeing with his innocence(the baby)through the wasteland(the desert) around him.
he start with singing "Here shall we live in this terrible town", song i think it´s about living in a terrible town, in a crappy apartment, with a lot of noise, and everybody in the block knows what each other are doing because of it´s anold building where the neighbors can hear what your doing and the opposite, because of bad isolation, he sings "And the walls shall have eyes And the doors shall have ears". and there always is party and trouble in the street at night "But we'll dance in their dark". and he is very tired of the hole thing, it is draining him of energy "Slow burn", just like me :) i don´t understand quite "Where the price for our minds shall squeeze them tight like a fist" bit of the song
To me I think Bowie is grapling with a possible recent cancer diagnosis. The tour for this album was billed as his last tour, and proved to be true. It's a slow burn in a terrible town. RIP Bowie
PT really drives this song with an amorphous swirl of sound as Bowie told the BBC in 2002 and it's the most eccentric yet aggressive guitar I've seen him play in years. Brilliant isn't he. They are both brilliant!!