"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.
From the height of the highway onramp we saw,
Two dogs, dead in a field,
Glowing on the oakland coliseum green seats wasteland,
Dogs, dogs we thought were dead,
They rose up, rose up when whistled at, their rib cage inflating like men on the beach being photographed,
A guard dog, guard dog, for what? for what?
Against tofers ellis pennyless athletics fanatics,
Getting into games through a whole in the fence,
For the owner of the blue tarp tent,
Pitched by a creek beneath an onramp,
In the privacy of the last three,
Skin and bony tree, devoid of leaves,
And us undeceased, and our new cds,
Dippin' on goodies, oakland
it's hard to stand the sight of two dogs dead under a sky so blue,
You have to stop the blood to your head,
To fit the breathe in front of you,
we secretly long to be some part of a car crash,
Long to see your arms stripped of the tendons,
The nudity of swelling exposed vein,
Webbing the back of your hand,
To be a red tendoned dog,
To be red tendoned dogs,
Blood breathing by the side of the highway
I long to be dead,
Center of a curious crowd,
To be touched,
Sticky like nearly dried paint,
Their soft silent stare nursing your face,
Anticipating the slightest pinch I flinch of pain,
Everyone blank in accident awe,
As the car crash fiberglass dust straight up settles on your raw muscle tissue
it's hard to stand the sight of two dogs dead under a sky so blue,
You have to stop the blood to your head,
To fit the breathe in front of you,
To be a red tendoned dog, to be red tendoned dogs, to be red tendoned dogs, to be red tendoned dogs,
To be dead center of a curious crowd
~against my misery I don't think I've seen my screeching pain, I can now feel what's around us it is some sort of harmony, the harmony of overwhelming murder~
Two dogs, dead in a field,
Glowing on the oakland coliseum green seats wasteland,
Dogs, dogs we thought were dead,
They rose up, rose up when whistled at, their rib cage inflating like men on the beach being photographed,
A guard dog, guard dog, for what? for what?
Against tofers ellis pennyless athletics fanatics,
Getting into games through a whole in the fence,
For the owner of the blue tarp tent,
Pitched by a creek beneath an onramp,
In the privacy of the last three,
Skin and bony tree, devoid of leaves,
And us undeceased, and our new cds,
Dippin' on goodies, oakland
it's hard to stand the sight of two dogs dead under a sky so blue,
You have to stop the blood to your head,
To fit the breathe in front of you,
we secretly long to be some part of a car crash,
Long to see your arms stripped of the tendons,
The nudity of swelling exposed vein,
Webbing the back of your hand,
To be a red tendoned dog,
To be red tendoned dogs,
Blood breathing by the side of the highway
I long to be dead,
Center of a curious crowd,
To be touched,
Sticky like nearly dried paint,
Their soft silent stare nursing your face,
Anticipating the slightest pinch I flinch of pain,
Everyone blank in accident awe,
As the car crash fiberglass dust straight up settles on your raw muscle tissue
it's hard to stand the sight of two dogs dead under a sky so blue,
You have to stop the blood to your head,
To fit the breathe in front of you,
To be a red tendoned dog, to be red tendoned dogs, to be red tendoned dogs, to be red tendoned dogs,
To be dead center of a curious crowd
~against my misery I don't think I've seen my screeching pain, I can now feel what's around us it is some sort of harmony, the harmony of overwhelming murder~
Lyrics submitted by tiredgorilla, edited by Malhavic
Dead Dogs Two Lyrics as written by
Lyrics © TERRORBIRD PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Fast Car
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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"
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Ebba Grön
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This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
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This is about bronies. They communicate by stomping.
Page
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There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
This is a great example of how cLOUDDEAD can observe and twist simple scenarios and turn them into surreal abstract metaphors and analogies for more complicated concepts.
I agree that "It's hard to stand the sight of two dogs dead under a sky so blue" pretty clearly identifies the inherent struggle self-conscious organisms must face concerning mortality: the end of "me".
"We secretly long to be some part of a car crash" -We [esp. as a society], have the desire to be a part of a spectacle, to be the center of attention to curious bystanders, strangers . . to be known and recognized, to be significant, even in a transient moment.
Now, let's just have some fun. "I long to see your arms stripped to the tendons, the nudity of swelling exposed veins." Could this reflect also, the desire to see the 'raw' in others, an essence, something 'underneath the surface of the skin'? The raw, visceral mechanics of 'others'? To see the exposed machinery of something like you, it becomes a spectacle also. The desire to be involved in and witness spectacles is seems to be a strong motif.
Now who has got the gonads to relate the sample of Werner Herzog's speech there back to the song?
Also, has anyone seen or heard of David Cronenberg's 'CRASH'? This song always reminded me of it, more obviously because of the coupling of car crashes with desires....a sort of fetishizing of it..
Against my misery I don't think I've seen my screeching pain, I can now feel what's around us.- Here I will borrow Albert Camus' philosophy of absurdity. In the hustle bustle of everyday life we are disconnected from the boredom and struggle of living. It is a double edged sword. We are misers because we feel misplaced from the struggle of reality, however; it is the struggle of reality that encourages the safer route of non-authenticity in our lives. <br /> It is some sort of harmony, the harmony of overwhelming murder.- Here I will borrow Baudrillard. Our chosen routes of non-authenticity have themselves become the replacement for reality. In Baudrillard's "The Perfect Crime", he discusses the murder of reality and it's replacement by empty signs. <br /> In the context of the song, "To be red-tendoned dogs." is the fatal conclusion that pushes the hyperreal death hypothesis beyond itself. It is the only available reaction. Death is no longer the opposite of life, it is the mechanism that brings your reality before you and allows you to present yourself to others. If I cannot be a "me" for others, I can be an "it" for others. As an "it", I am finally aware of the pain of living as the "me" is merely a player in the postmodern play of empty signs.
ok, the first thing i noticed, is there arent actually any dead dogs in this song. They see the dogs as they're passing the oakland colliseum after buying some new shizzle. the dogs are guard dogs for some guy in a tent below the onramp, making sure no one sneaks into the games. :P.
that's the easy part.
the rest of the song, to me, seems to be showing the need to be acknowledged, and the center of attention. The vocalist feels the only way he can do this, is to be part of a car crash, and gettin fecked up, which would also put him out of his misery of being ignored.
an all round cool btu disturbing song.
ya Gibby has got the beginning part right. the dogs are just laying down but guarding the coliseum - which has an whole in the fence which people try to sneak in. My interpretation of the rest: they use the dead dogs are a metaphor for what we want to be. We want to be the focus of attention, but the way we get there is the mutilation of ourselves. its like a kid who acts to gain the notice of his neglectful parents. We must seem harmed (dead dogs) to gain any kind of notice and any love. We all want people to be with us so we scar and hurt ourselves so people will feel sorry enough to take notice. That is what I feel anyway.
I agree mostly with S-Fury, yeah. I mean, excluding the whole story about the guard dogs, assuming that this whole scenario he sets up is useless for the sake of interpretation, in short, we all want to be 'Red Tendoned Dogs,' constantly nurtured and tended to. You want to make reasons for people to notice you, to be a red tendoned dog. And the line 'it's hard to stand the sight of two dogs dead under a sky so blue' is my basis. No matter what your reasoning, any good person would never up and ignore someone in big trouble while everything else is fine.
the imagery in this song is so good. its really hard to decipher meanings in clouddead songs, especially since they jump around to talk about different things. but the red tendoned dogs line repeated sounds amazing.
quite a dark song lyrically. what all the imagery is supposed to mean is anyones guess. my take: a person is confrontend with actual death, it reminds her/him of his own mortality. the next thought is thinking about dying yrself, that's pretty much explred in the whole second verse (to be dead center of a curious crowd).
great lyrics. great song. love it.
I'd agree with Proxima's interpretation.
I mostly just wanted to add that there's no such words as "tofers ellis". The word you're looking for here would be OVERZEALOUS.
It makes sense, you know.
I dont think the lyrics or general meaning are that significant in this song. but it is about death and how it feels like to confront death in the form of two dogs. but anyway, I like this song a lot.
Pretty good transcription of the lyrics. Very close to what I hear.
However, the last paragraph is completely off. It's actually a quote of Werner Herzog from the film Burder of Dreams. Here's what he says:
"The birds are in misery. I don’t think they - they sing. They just screech in pain. (...) Taking a close look at - at what's around us, there - there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder."
Sorry, the name of the film is Burden of Dreams. Typo.