"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.
Say you'll meet me after school
Lucky me you're pretty cool
Badly want someone to want me
Take me home so you can flaunt me
Who this boyfriend number 10
Daddy crows from in his den
Roughly push me to your bed
Pants are taken lights are dead
Think you're perfect irresistible
Queen of hedonistic principles
Wondrous vision, buxom swell
Look like heaven taste like hell
You seduce me with your plastic smile
Roll on lips and your ponytail
And you tell me I'm the only one
Same excuse for every father's son
The promise that you just can't keep
I'm lonely but I'm not that cheap
I used to believe in love
You use it just like a glove
Stop the fingerprints from showing
Taking things when no one's knowing
Touch me cause my daddy's rich
Marry into bigger fish
Tell me I'm your dearest honey
Think that I'm just easy money
I don't care if sex is casual
Fantasies or feelings actual
I won't be a stepping stone
To any kind of bullshit throne
Girl you smoking cigarettes
Rancid poison on your breath
Taste yourself you smell like death
To love you I must drink my meth
Kiss you is like lick the street
Tar and spit between my teeth
Heart attacks and sweet relief
Take your pleasures life is brief
Fuck yourself and fuck your cigarette
Take your chances take your liberties
Fuck yourself and fuck your cigarette
Take your chances take your liberties
Lucky me you're pretty cool
Badly want someone to want me
Take me home so you can flaunt me
Who this boyfriend number 10
Daddy crows from in his den
Roughly push me to your bed
Pants are taken lights are dead
Think you're perfect irresistible
Queen of hedonistic principles
Wondrous vision, buxom swell
Look like heaven taste like hell
You seduce me with your plastic smile
Roll on lips and your ponytail
And you tell me I'm the only one
Same excuse for every father's son
The promise that you just can't keep
I'm lonely but I'm not that cheap
I used to believe in love
You use it just like a glove
Stop the fingerprints from showing
Taking things when no one's knowing
Touch me cause my daddy's rich
Marry into bigger fish
Tell me I'm your dearest honey
Think that I'm just easy money
I don't care if sex is casual
Fantasies or feelings actual
I won't be a stepping stone
To any kind of bullshit throne
Girl you smoking cigarettes
Rancid poison on your breath
Taste yourself you smell like death
To love you I must drink my meth
Kiss you is like lick the street
Tar and spit between my teeth
Heart attacks and sweet relief
Take your pleasures life is brief
Fuck yourself and fuck your cigarette
Take your chances take your liberties
Fuck yourself and fuck your cigarette
Take your chances take your liberties
Lyrics submitted by U2takemehigher
Cigarette Lyrics as written by Gordon Brown
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Fintage House Publishing
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
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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"
Dreamwalker
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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.
When We Were Young
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This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
Punchline
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Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.
This song is about the lead singer (who happens to be Sting's son) having feelings for a girl, but realizing not only does she smoke (a disgusting habit) but that she just wants to be with him simply because of who his father is. (Badly want someone to want me, take me home so you can flaunt me....Touch me cause my daddy’s rich, marry into bigger fish, tell me I’m your dearest honey, think that I’m just easy money)