"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.
A sudden unpredictable sky contains the dawn
Seconds in an hour counting down before the day is born
Long enough in the grave to be sustained
Science, or belief, reminders of a time we can't regain
Have all the idle dreamers awoken from their dreams
To find their not alone?
Nothing now is really as it seems
This would always arrive somehow
Problem left unsolved, radiating in the here and now
And in my memory
Only just begun to understand the reasons why
A one in ten degree
Alternate between the faithful and the fearless
If all the riches and ransoms coalesced
As one were intertwined
You would be the brightest I possess
If all the gold and the silver came combined
You would still define the colours I imagine in my mind
And in my memory
Under the same moon, lighted on a lunar sea
A one in ten degree
Alternate between the faithful and the fearless
I can't remember, can't even be him
And chances are slim that I'm found
No finer substance, no final demand
I'm tired and know no bounds
Thought that I was pulling through
Though I never had a chance of winning at all
Caught between the heard and the seen
Something out of quarantine beginning to call
In silence I'm drowning
I'm spinning around and round
Oblivion lies unrevealed
More than flesh and bone can bear together to feel
In silence I'm sinking
I don't think I'll make it down
Riding the meltdown, right in the fallout
And I turn to the fire when I'm spurned
Send out the thing that is driving me crazy
I can douse it and leave it to burn
Daylight dissolving, crawling miasma
On a spellbound and desolate prayer
Somebody somewhere stop me before
I rip away all the soul they've repaired
Time already grows heavy, gravity won't hold steady
Pole people cry for their lives passing by darkly
This belongs to you for he would have loved you as I do
Life as we feared on the wrong side of weird
Binds us two
And in my memory
Only just begun to understand the reasons why
A one in ten degree
Alternate between the faithful and the fearless
Where are you now? Who are you now?
I can't go there
Thought that I was pulling through
Though I never had a chance of winning at all
Caught between the heard and the seen
Something out of quarantine beginning to call
Riding the meltdown, right in the fallout
And I turn to the fire when I'm spurned
Send out the thing that is driving me crazy
I can douse it and leave it to burn
Once every lifetime shadows are lifted
And the daylight disperses the dark
Want to be sure that all I've endured is put away
But where do I start?
Seconds in an hour counting down before the day is born
Long enough in the grave to be sustained
Science, or belief, reminders of a time we can't regain
Have all the idle dreamers awoken from their dreams
To find their not alone?
Nothing now is really as it seems
This would always arrive somehow
Problem left unsolved, radiating in the here and now
And in my memory
Only just begun to understand the reasons why
A one in ten degree
Alternate between the faithful and the fearless
If all the riches and ransoms coalesced
As one were intertwined
You would be the brightest I possess
If all the gold and the silver came combined
You would still define the colours I imagine in my mind
And in my memory
Under the same moon, lighted on a lunar sea
A one in ten degree
Alternate between the faithful and the fearless
I can't remember, can't even be him
And chances are slim that I'm found
No finer substance, no final demand
I'm tired and know no bounds
Thought that I was pulling through
Though I never had a chance of winning at all
Caught between the heard and the seen
Something out of quarantine beginning to call
In silence I'm drowning
I'm spinning around and round
Oblivion lies unrevealed
More than flesh and bone can bear together to feel
In silence I'm sinking
I don't think I'll make it down
Riding the meltdown, right in the fallout
And I turn to the fire when I'm spurned
Send out the thing that is driving me crazy
I can douse it and leave it to burn
Daylight dissolving, crawling miasma
On a spellbound and desolate prayer
Somebody somewhere stop me before
I rip away all the soul they've repaired
Time already grows heavy, gravity won't hold steady
Pole people cry for their lives passing by darkly
This belongs to you for he would have loved you as I do
Life as we feared on the wrong side of weird
Binds us two
And in my memory
Only just begun to understand the reasons why
A one in ten degree
Alternate between the faithful and the fearless
Where are you now? Who are you now?
I can't go there
Thought that I was pulling through
Though I never had a chance of winning at all
Caught between the heard and the seen
Something out of quarantine beginning to call
Riding the meltdown, right in the fallout
And I turn to the fire when I'm spurned
Send out the thing that is driving me crazy
I can douse it and leave it to burn
Once every lifetime shadows are lifted
And the daylight disperses the dark
Want to be sure that all I've endured is put away
But where do I start?
Lyrics submitted by awberg
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