"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.
Made a note of it
Did you write it on your hand
Put a name on it
To help you understand
Well do you see
The futures holidays are for me
Just let me know
Where we go after the fall
Like the sound of it
Gonna hang it on your wall
Turn and run with it
For the sake of one and all
Where you go, nobody knows
Well do you see
The futures holidays are for me
Just let me know
Where to go
Where you go after the fall
Did you write it on your hand
Put a name on it
To help you understand
Well do you see
The futures holidays are for me
Just let me know
Where we go after the fall
Like the sound of it
Gonna hang it on your wall
Turn and run with it
For the sake of one and all
Where you go, nobody knows
Well do you see
The futures holidays are for me
Just let me know
Where to go
Where you go after the fall
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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"
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
When We Were Young
Blink-182
Blink-182
This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
I had a completely different impression of the song from the first time I head it. The song is about the environment and how we are destroying our future.
Each verse makes the historical links between science, capitalism, and consumerism. In each there is an act through which we take possession of something. But the aggregate of our individual actions is destroying the planet. And at the same time we have and idea, a myth of some future, the futures holidays, where things will still be able to continue much as they have been.
The narrator questions, "Just let me know, where we go after the fall." The narrator doubts the myth. The the narrator states, "Where you go, nobody knows.' But like many of us the narrator continues to believe that there can be a way out. "Just let me know, Where to go, Where you go after the fall"
When I saw the video I was convinced that I had it. I never even thought about it the way that others are. Now I begin to doubt.
is this the guy from the shins playing?
it's Jose Gonzalez.
Interesting lyrics, if does in fact have meaning I'd like someone to tell us what they think it means.
Jose Gonzalez sounds very identical to Jose Feliciano (famous for Faliz Navidad) on this track, so much so that I thought it was him before looking it up. This is a great track, very clean eclectic rock tune, not too trippy, not too electronica, it's just right.
its aboot fleeting fame
this song rocks...jose gonzalez is awesome and is voice works perfectly for this song. its got a great groove too which usually works for songs. hell yeah
oh yeah..i think its just about dissappearing for the winter to a nice place and forgetting the world for a spell while the world does the same about you. i think it involves 2 people on the vacation
Maybe its about a relationship between a boy and a girl that was good but some circumstance forced them to split...perhaps she had to move far away for college or work or just because her family is moving.
This song could be about false hopes...he presents to her that he wants to go wherever she is going to hide from the truth...that deep inside he knows he will have to let her go...and it will burn like hell.
Whatever this song means...from the tone of the music...I get a very melancholy vibe. There's nothing happy about it.
Great song though!