"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.
Let the games begin if you want to f*** with me
You can't disturb the course of P & see & T & D & me
I'm on a mission
To set straight
The vice, the curse, the date, the gate relate
To this, I insist be it's weak to dis see I'm runna up so suckers stick to your 40
How could I give a d***, give a d*** if you approve what it's about
I just freak out
Just guess ya'll see'mon come back slipped
Outta whack as the master
Laid out the music
Death I just say f*** you, the void unknown we're thrown
through while lost in life's psychedelic trip we take
There's another more bizarre we have to make
world we have nowhere beyond
Take out the earth the back is gone
At life's end we'll feel the calm
How strange we should be here at all
[Chorus]
If you don't have someone to do it with it's not worth doin'
To all my friends, it's not the end the earth has not swallowed me yet
Into whose womb were you woven what kin of your skin dropped you then
Bodies cloven
Light of daybreak blinded next exit
The wild darkness forming inside it
My day wasn't promised me each death it brings reminding me we
Are rumbling through this cursed universe where death is birth
Think not but what your manifest is worth
Giving up a verse the curse occurs a thirst
To burst first breaking through the center of the universe
Slamming down on the lingo flow so jam to the bum-rush single
Long ago has been become now when you find out there's no break
In the rhythm
Black anima makes my stamina stand alone disown the cinema
farewell to posing decades dozing comin' up the steps of the new
Screen rising scenes from the lost world shapes hard to tell
Which is which as if drawn by a child holmes
[Chorus]
This is the heat to flush your face
You can't disturb the course of P & see & T & D & me
I'm on a mission
To set straight
The vice, the curse, the date, the gate relate
To this, I insist be it's weak to dis see I'm runna up so suckers stick to your 40
How could I give a d***, give a d*** if you approve what it's about
I just freak out
Just guess ya'll see'mon come back slipped
Outta whack as the master
Laid out the music
Death I just say f*** you, the void unknown we're thrown
through while lost in life's psychedelic trip we take
There's another more bizarre we have to make
world we have nowhere beyond
Take out the earth the back is gone
At life's end we'll feel the calm
How strange we should be here at all
[Chorus]
If you don't have someone to do it with it's not worth doin'
To all my friends, it's not the end the earth has not swallowed me yet
Into whose womb were you woven what kin of your skin dropped you then
Bodies cloven
Light of daybreak blinded next exit
The wild darkness forming inside it
My day wasn't promised me each death it brings reminding me we
Are rumbling through this cursed universe where death is birth
Think not but what your manifest is worth
Giving up a verse the curse occurs a thirst
To burst first breaking through the center of the universe
Slamming down on the lingo flow so jam to the bum-rush single
Long ago has been become now when you find out there's no break
In the rhythm
Black anima makes my stamina stand alone disown the cinema
farewell to posing decades dozing comin' up the steps of the new
Screen rising scenes from the lost world shapes hard to tell
Which is which as if drawn by a child holmes
[Chorus]
This is the heat to flush your face
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More Featured Meanings
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
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"
Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
This is about bronies. They communicate by stomping.
When We Were Young
Blink-182
Blink-182
This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
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.
haha..I agree ate_16am! It's SUCH a great song live.