"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.
Rise, ablaze, libidinous
Devildom voyeurs
Ascend to smother the light
Nascent aeons confer
Chaos is spat
From the black eternal sea
Serrated mountains of mad shadows
Carving towards misdeed
Stormchoirs gather
A pestilential hiss
Sunset evokes Luciferian fire
The skies are ruptured like a knifed orifice
Supernal vestments hang tattered
Cathedrals shriek to pulpit oratory
Invasions scale Babel's ivory towers
Poised to sodomise a world upon it's knees
(Victory spent
Breathe deep benighted scent)
We are as a flame born unto the darkness
Desires burning in palatial glades
And virtues once aloof, now worming beneath us
Shalt see their children, pleasuring as slaves
Attack!
Wreak atrocities on those we have despised
Judgements be riven, from the skies
Darkness empower let us master prophecy
Fulfilling destiny the promised fever
Bedizens eyes paralysed with blasphemy
Written in flesh across the howling ether
Artemis
Spread the bliss of this Lupercalia
With stars erased, throw wide the gates
The infidel soon unmasks her face
Neath silken shroud she waxes horn
Sharpened to skewer dawn
I am as a plague, born to the priestess
The secret amour of her archangelic rape
Jaded-eyed when my lovers, possessed
Screamed out their agonies, upon the stake
"The most August sorcerers of Hades
Darkly seized for me a throne
And the upraised scythe so terribly scribed
Vengeance in Jesuit blood on stone
From this ransacked celestial temple
I hold the prophet's severed head unto all nations"
Tremble before us
Lords of the star-veiled red sepulchres
Rushing deathwards, our Tartarean fires
Kindle pandemonia to furnace the earth
"Our voices are opened graves
Through which the never-dead escape"
From dank, abyssic dream
Pursuing ascendancy
The enemy has held three seasons
Imparadised, whilst we writhed
To psycho-dramas penned by aerial decree
Now freed to plunder
Heaven torn asunder
Devildom voyeurs
Ascend to smother the light
Nascent aeons confer
Chaos is spat
From the black eternal sea
Serrated mountains of mad shadows
Carving towards misdeed
Stormchoirs gather
A pestilential hiss
Sunset evokes Luciferian fire
The skies are ruptured like a knifed orifice
Supernal vestments hang tattered
Cathedrals shriek to pulpit oratory
Invasions scale Babel's ivory towers
Poised to sodomise a world upon it's knees
(Victory spent
Breathe deep benighted scent)
We are as a flame born unto the darkness
Desires burning in palatial glades
And virtues once aloof, now worming beneath us
Shalt see their children, pleasuring as slaves
Attack!
Wreak atrocities on those we have despised
Judgements be riven, from the skies
Darkness empower let us master prophecy
Fulfilling destiny the promised fever
Bedizens eyes paralysed with blasphemy
Written in flesh across the howling ether
Artemis
Spread the bliss of this Lupercalia
With stars erased, throw wide the gates
The infidel soon unmasks her face
Neath silken shroud she waxes horn
Sharpened to skewer dawn
I am as a plague, born to the priestess
The secret amour of her archangelic rape
Jaded-eyed when my lovers, possessed
Screamed out their agonies, upon the stake
"The most August sorcerers of Hades
Darkly seized for me a throne
And the upraised scythe so terribly scribed
Vengeance in Jesuit blood on stone
From this ransacked celestial temple
I hold the prophet's severed head unto all nations"
Tremble before us
Lords of the star-veiled red sepulchres
Rushing deathwards, our Tartarean fires
Kindle pandemonia to furnace the earth
"Our voices are opened graves
Through which the never-dead escape"
From dank, abyssic dream
Pursuing ascendancy
The enemy has held three seasons
Imparadised, whilst we writhed
To psycho-dramas penned by aerial decree
Now freed to plunder
Heaven torn asunder
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
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This is about bronies. They communicate by stomping.
Mountain Song
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
I Can't Go To Sleep
Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang Clan
This song is written as the perspective of the boys in the street, as a whole, and what path they are going to choose as they get older and grow into men. (This is why the music video takes place in an orphanage.) The seen, and unseen collective suffering is imbedded in the boys’ mind, consciously or subconsciously, and is haunting them. Which path will the boys choose? Issac Hayes is the voice of reason, maybe God, the angel on his shoulder, or the voice of his forefathers from beyond the grave who can see the big picture and are pleading with the boys not to continue the violence and pattern of killing their brothers, but to rise above. The most beautiful song and has so many levels. Racism towards African Americans in America would not exist if everyone sat down and listened to this song and understood the history behind the words. The power, fear, pleading in RZA and Ghostface voices are genuine and powerful. Issac Hayes’ strong voice makes the perfect strong father figure, who is possibly from beyond the grave.
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
Damnit, it should be "its" instead of "it's"... the grammar nazi has failed.