"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.
We're here to
Bring the people and the music and the movement all together now
We see through
Repetitive etiquette and the highly unoriginal
We're here to
Bring the people and the music and the movement all together now
They will lose
Check it out now
This is a necessary change from the grim simple and plain
Gotta exercise that brain to break the chain pain is a part of gain
No need to explain
We innovate to generate an intricately interwoven tapestry
Of musical and ethical epiphanies
The interest is minimal
I'm on my own mission to mess with an angel
to take it all the way to where the sun is
Just like a runner loving running
Around to turn it into a simple symphony
Simple sentiment adrenaline is coming back
I made it my own city, whys it gotta be a superstar
I'd rather be a galaxy
But how you see is so dependent on the medicine the rhetoric
And how at any second you think you could sit on the brink of this
World is all asleep and I have no apologies
I breathe
Keep my rhymes on what we ride on
Let bygones be bygones
The migraines don't sidetrack
My final destination nothing rivals predetermination
To exterminate the germination
Of a nation that accepts anything that's thrown in their fat face
Cause when there's nothing left
There's no more point to the rat race
We don't waste a minute of the day
Hope you can figure what I'm saying
Trying to send it all way to another stage
A creative alternator rated and greater
The crazy maniabilities take it all up in your face wait
Success ain't only based on self esteem
It takes a sense to differentiate between
what's yours and someone else's dreams
I felt the screams climbing up my cold spine
Saying now's the time to put in all the energy
To get rid of the enemy.. I said its so..
We're here to
Bring the people and the music and the movement all together now
We see through
Repetitive etiquette and the highly unoriginal
We're here to
Bring the people and the music and the movement all together now
They will lose
Sick of the same old thing
Free us and touch what we can't see
Twist that knife and watch him bleed
Lost inside its way too deep
Someone choke me
Help me breathe
Run from mistakes
Right in my face
Feels like I'm running in place
Lyrics submitted by Inoue versus Date
Now Lyrics as written by Terence Oliver Blanchard
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
More Featured Meanings
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
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
Silent Planet
Silent Planet
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.
Mountain Song
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
It's true, he really shows us why he's a legend here.