"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.
Unstable condition
A symptom of life
In mental and environmental change
Atmospheric disturbance
The feverish flux
Of human interface
And interchange
The impulse is pure
Sometimes our circuits get shorted
By external interference
Signals get crossed
And the balance distorted
By internal incoherence
A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a mood lifter
Everybody need reverse polarity
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to deviate
From the norm
An ounce of perception
A pound of obscure
Process information
At half-speed
Pause
Rewind, replay
Warm memory chip
Random sample
Hold the one you need
Leave out the fiction
The fact is
This friction
Will only be worn by persistence
Leave out conditions
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence
A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a soft filter
Everybody need reverse polarity
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to elevate
From the norm
Everybody got mixed feelings
Everybody got mixed feelings
Everybody got to deviate from the norm
Everybody got to deviate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to escalate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to deviate from the norm
A symptom of life
In mental and environmental change
Atmospheric disturbance
The feverish flux
Of human interface
And interchange
The impulse is pure
Sometimes our circuits get shorted
By external interference
Signals get crossed
And the balance distorted
By internal incoherence
A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a mood lifter
Everybody need reverse polarity
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to deviate
From the norm
An ounce of perception
A pound of obscure
Process information
At half-speed
Pause
Rewind, replay
Warm memory chip
Random sample
Hold the one you need
Leave out the fiction
The fact is
This friction
Will only be worn by persistence
Leave out conditions
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence
A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a soft filter
Everybody need reverse polarity
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to elevate
From the norm
Everybody got mixed feelings
Everybody got mixed feelings
Everybody got to deviate from the norm
Everybody got to deviate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to escalate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to deviate from the norm
Lyrics submitted by shed27, edited by TheGreatSkeeve
Vital Signs Lyrics as written by Gary Lee Weinrib Neil Elwood Peart
Lyrics © Anthem Entertainment
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Great version of a great song,
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First off, I agree with what everyone has said so far, and that this song is amazing. I just really got into it today, to be honest. But what I've noticed about Rush and their albums is that often times they have a common theme. In Moving Pictures, for instance, there seems to be an idea that conformity and being "normal" is just a myth, that everyone is different. And in Counterparts, the theme seems to be that things will always be bad, so just learn to try and appreciate the good parts of it. I'm not sure, but that is what it seems like to me...
What I really love is the way the guitar plays over the top of the rest, its almost like a sine or cosine wave. Some times he strums on the beat, other times it on the half, but taken as a whole, its fluid and, like the lyrics, its scientific (unstable condition a symptom of life - the opposite of which is a stable condition/entropy/equilibrium all equal death. google "far from equilibrium dynamics"), yet draws the boundaries on what the extremes are (reverse polarity). <br /> <br /> And yes, I agree, Rush enjoyed creating a framework for each album, and this one is no different. Its kind of sad that most albums now are just one or two good songs packed around a bunch of second rate bs. No coherence, no message, no nothing. The entire album is great, its almost like one gigantic song.