"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.
Boats ease into the harbor bearing real suspicious cargo
And the sunlight on the water
Sets a switch off in your brain
The things that you've got coming will consume you
There's someone waiting out there in an alley with a chain
The ghosts that haunt your building are prepared to take on substance
And the dull pain that you live with isn't getting any duller
There's a closet full of almost-pristine videotape
Documenting sordid little scenes in living color
Here they come
The young thousands
Here they come
The young thousands
You drive east from the ocean with both hands tied on the wheel
And you go past Garden Grove
As the pleasure index rises
The things that you've got coming will do things that you're afraid to
There is someone waiting out there with a mouthful of surprises
The ghosts that haunt your building have been learning how to breathe
They scan the hallways nightly vainly searching for a sign
There must be diamonds somewhere in a place that stinks this bad
There are brighter things than diamonds coming down the line
Here they come
The young thousands
Here they come
The young thousands
And the sunlight on the water
Sets a switch off in your brain
The things that you've got coming will consume you
There's someone waiting out there in an alley with a chain
The ghosts that haunt your building are prepared to take on substance
And the dull pain that you live with isn't getting any duller
There's a closet full of almost-pristine videotape
Documenting sordid little scenes in living color
Here they come
The young thousands
Here they come
The young thousands
You drive east from the ocean with both hands tied on the wheel
And you go past Garden Grove
As the pleasure index rises
The things that you've got coming will do things that you're afraid to
There is someone waiting out there with a mouthful of surprises
The ghosts that haunt your building have been learning how to breathe
They scan the hallways nightly vainly searching for a sign
There must be diamonds somewhere in a place that stinks this bad
There are brighter things than diamonds coming down the line
Here they come
The young thousands
Here they come
The young thousands
Lyrics submitted by I'm a Pirate
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I really like the line "And the dull pain that you live with isn't getting any duller". I am pretty sure that this is the reason the narrator does drugs. His existence has been marked with a dull pain that he tries to make duller with drugs.