"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.
In your compartment, I'm sorry.
Under a tiny sheet: a silhouette of someone.
Light hits your curtains
I'm leaving, but with a certainty
That I will meet you again in dreams.
For your sake, I'll still escape
Time and time again.
Will you be my succubus until I wake up?
Emancipation, I'm sorry.
We will have none of that
And you have met with your love.
In your compartment I'm freezing.
There is a window
Somebody broke it from the inside.
For your sake, I'll still escape
Time and time again.
Will you be my succubus until I wake up?
Under a tiny sheet: a silhouette of someone.
Light hits your curtains
I'm leaving, but with a certainty
That I will meet you again in dreams.
For your sake, I'll still escape
Time and time again.
Will you be my succubus until I wake up?
Emancipation, I'm sorry.
We will have none of that
And you have met with your love.
In your compartment I'm freezing.
There is a window
Somebody broke it from the inside.
For your sake, I'll still escape
Time and time again.
Will you be my succubus until I wake up?
Lyrics submitted by pinkmonster
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
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The Night We Met
Lord Huron
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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"
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."
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."
This is by far the creepiest song I have ever heard in my life. Therefore, totally Mew. I thought he was talking about a hospital until I looked up the word succubus. Here it is strait from the dictionary. Succubus: a demon in female form, said to have sexual intercourse with men in their sleep. Make sense now anyone? I cant believe this is the first comment...
Wahh, I always thought the lyrics were 'under a time machine'
but listening to the song whilst reading, makes more sense :)
"In your compartment, I'm sorry/ Under a tiny sheet: a silhouette of someone"
-Well, the obvious thing to say is that it's about a girl. He's with her at her place and everything looks so tiny, probably because she is rather small, a "silhouette" of a person.
"Light hits your curtain/ I'm leaving, but with a certainty/ That I will meet you again in dreams."
-He's just been with a woman he knows he can never be with, and probably shouldn't be with, so he gets out of there first thing in the morning. But he knows that he won't be able to get her out of his head.
"For your sake, I'll still escape/ Time and time again./ Will you be my succubus until I wake up?"
-He meets her in his dreams from now on, because he knows that for her sake, it would be best if they never met again. But he still loves (lusts over?) her, so he only thinks about her in his dreams, and replays these forbidden sexual fantasies in his head about her. He has turned his memory of her into a succubus, something he knows is bad for him, but he can't help but want it from the moments he falls asleep to the moment he wakes up.
"Emancipation, I'm sorry./ We will have none of that/ And you have met with your love." -He knows that this fantasy will haunt him forever, and he will never be free from its restraints. It has called to him so strongly, that he's fallen for this ideal woman that may have once been real, but has since only become the perfect being in his head. -This could also be interpreted as him not wanting to let go of the fantasy for the same reason.
"In your compartment I'm freezing./ There is a window/ Somebody broke it from the inside." -He probably dared to return to where the original woman lived, the place he left so long ago, but finds that she is no longer there. The freezing is probably both from the broken window letting in a draft, as well as the new knowledge that he was too late to try and be with the woman he had since fallen in love with. As for the window broken from the inside, that could mean that the woman broke the window, either in the symbolic sense (perhaps she had a similar fantasy in her head of him that she escaped from), or literally, in which case it could have been a suicide (now there's really no chance of him having anything with her), or, in light of his comparing her to a succubus (a very sexual type of creature), a night with another guy that may have not ended well, perhaps with her trying to escape from him.
(Repeat of chorus) -The music and lyrics together at this last part make this sound like a finality. He knows he's lost his chance forever. He wanted to break free of this succubus dream by being with the real person it was based off of, but now that it's impossible, he doesn't care if this fantasy takes him over again, since that is all he has left of her.
The song has a pretty gloomy feel to it, almost remorseful. In both versions, there's a ghostly moaning in the background during the chorus, probably representing the pain within the lyrics of the chorus.
I really like this song, very mellow and bleak. My interpretation may be wrong, but that's what the site is for. :)