"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.
You want to catch your breath you want to get out
But as you surface you don't really know how
How to live upon the solid ground
Sometimes it's easier to let yourself drown
LOVE IS
THICK LIKE
BLOOD LIKE
HONEY
You cannot spell it out there are no words
Mrs Johnson never taught me those verbs
On how to give myself and how to receive
It is something that's inside of you and me
LOVE IS
THICK LIKE
BLOOD LIKE
HONEY
Forget everything you ever learned
No one listens when you want to be heard
Just bleed the bittersweet
Seven sunrises and seven more nights
You'd think that we could learn to do it right
If nothing changes then I'm gonna stop
But do I really have a choice?
I think not
But as you surface you don't really know how
How to live upon the solid ground
Sometimes it's easier to let yourself drown
LOVE IS
THICK LIKE
BLOOD LIKE
HONEY
You cannot spell it out there are no words
Mrs Johnson never taught me those verbs
On how to give myself and how to receive
It is something that's inside of you and me
LOVE IS
THICK LIKE
BLOOD LIKE
HONEY
Forget everything you ever learned
No one listens when you want to be heard
Just bleed the bittersweet
Seven sunrises and seven more nights
You'd think that we could learn to do it right
If nothing changes then I'm gonna stop
But do I really have a choice?
I think not
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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"
Cajun Girl
Little Feat
Little Feat
Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
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,
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.
She is describing the chaos of love. It is powerful, which can be good and bad. Love is not perfect and is made better by mistakes and it cannot be controlled.
I agree with crypticdreamer except for one thing. Love is perfect. but people perceive it in different ways. You can love someone with all your heart but you can also love nachos or something. The word love can be so easily thrown around. There is so much depth to love and thats why sometimes it feels like we are caught in this mess. and its thick like she says. But....how can something so meaningful and deep not be perfect?
What I get out of this song is basically this:
Love, romantic or platonic, is not a picnic. It can be thick and heavy in our lives -- it gets difficult and complicated and painful, and oftentimes it seems like life would just be easier without it. Sometimes it seems to constrain us. And yet we feel this inexplicable pull towards it ("we cannot spell it out, there are no words"). We are human, and we love. It's in our blood (the double meaning of saying love is "thick like blood"), and we can't really avoid it. "If nothing changes then I'm gonna stop / but do I really have a choice? / I think not," describes it perfectly.
Love is a gift and a consequence of being human, so "just bleed the bittersweet." It will always be there.
I agree with CrypticDreamer. Musicmason11, you asked how something so meaningful and deep as love could not be perfect.
Well, nothing in life is perfect. Relationships are not perfectly smooth, just as a flower's petals are not perfectally straight and glass is not perfectly smooth. (There are millions of bumps and indents, amazingly.)
I think "perfection" is a term that humans came up with because we are hardly ever satisfied, and it's really just a faraway thought. Besides, anything that was ever perfect would be incredibly dull, don't you think? LIVING is not doing everything right, it's making mistake after mistake and learning and growing. Perfection does not exist, and the real beauty of everything lies in it's flaws. Why is love so amazing if it is not perfect? You could look at it this way: Love is amazing BECAUSE it is not perfect. Because it can be strong enough to fill those voids and embrace those imperfections. Because love is powerful enough to overcome mistakes and flaws.