"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.
Sometimes like a dream you come cut
from the same cloth
The light in your palm so white I feel it in my heart
Horse hoof imprint on the saddle back bare hide of
a horse
You come with steam of breath and Caligula's's head
To me so lonesome and longing and so unsatisfied
Even with all this beauty flooding deep into my eyes
Stop for a moment and listen to the wind
See the trees, leaves the sun they catch and
their rustling din.
Chorus:
Breathe deep fill up with relief don't go mad,
don't go mad.
Breathe deep fill up with relief don't go mad,
don't go mad.
Life is a long river learn from your past
I been reading my history to learn what the others
have seen
Blood in the hollow of my heart
Sweat on the skin of my chest
Run a little bit faster now and breath a little deeper
(Chorus)
Come to me come to me set me free,
Jack ass ginger, jack ass ginger.
Come to me come to me set me free,
Jack ass ginger, jack ass ginger
Looking for a structure to call my own
I reached down my throat
and grabbed my rack of bones.
Looking for a structure to call my own
I grabbed my rack of bones
I grabbed my rack of bones.
Cut by a blade of grass fell slain by a drop of rain.
Lay fallow fallen 40 feet onto pastures of catastrophe
Sucked out set adrift at sea
Floor board decked out with uncertainty
In open doldrums oceans of unknowable emotions
(Chorus)
Just before the end a great efflorescence
A plead to the will of the sea
A great soul collective
Painters pile paint upon paint
Losing themselves to get what they see
Enshrouded in a cocoon of doom
And then set free
(Chorus)
from the same cloth
The light in your palm so white I feel it in my heart
Horse hoof imprint on the saddle back bare hide of
a horse
You come with steam of breath and Caligula's's head
To me so lonesome and longing and so unsatisfied
Even with all this beauty flooding deep into my eyes
Stop for a moment and listen to the wind
See the trees, leaves the sun they catch and
their rustling din.
Chorus:
Breathe deep fill up with relief don't go mad,
don't go mad.
Breathe deep fill up with relief don't go mad,
don't go mad.
Life is a long river learn from your past
I been reading my history to learn what the others
have seen
Blood in the hollow of my heart
Sweat on the skin of my chest
Run a little bit faster now and breath a little deeper
(Chorus)
Come to me come to me set me free,
Jack ass ginger, jack ass ginger.
Come to me come to me set me free,
Jack ass ginger, jack ass ginger
Looking for a structure to call my own
I reached down my throat
and grabbed my rack of bones.
Looking for a structure to call my own
I grabbed my rack of bones
I grabbed my rack of bones.
Cut by a blade of grass fell slain by a drop of rain.
Lay fallow fallen 40 feet onto pastures of catastrophe
Sucked out set adrift at sea
Floor board decked out with uncertainty
In open doldrums oceans of unknowable emotions
(Chorus)
Just before the end a great efflorescence
A plead to the will of the sea
A great soul collective
Painters pile paint upon paint
Losing themselves to get what they see
Enshrouded in a cocoon of doom
And then set free
(Chorus)
Lyrics submitted by meow
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Fast Car
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Great version of a great song,
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Was wondering if they referencing the geographical location on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. I first went to the swimming hole and waterfall with the 20foot plus jump in 1981, it was an amazing beautiful place. Years later I went and it was brackish dirty squalid water with litter everywhere, sad.