"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.
I was three years old sitting in the seat of a Greyhound bus
My brother and me, Mama's tears falling like a Carolina rain
Cause she pulled out a gun the night before
Said he ain't gonna drink and hit me no more
She pulled the trigger on my father in a moment's rain
Thank God that gun wasn't loaded
Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive
Didn't care, anywhere but there that night
Now she held her babies tight
And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue
She was scared, she was broke
But all she knew was she was gonna do
What she had to
She got her a job in a trailer out west
It wasn't much but she was doing her best
Putting food on the table for her family
But then one day I came home from school
My Mama was crying alone in her room
She said, I lost my job and we're gonna lose the trailer too
And she got that volkswagon loaded
Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive
Didn't care, anywhere but there that night
She held her babies tight
And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue
She was scared, she was broke
But all she knew was she was gonna do
What she had to
Whenever things go wrong in my life
I just think of her, what it took that night
To get on that bus in a Carolina rain
Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive
Didn't care, anywhere but there that night
She held her babies tight
(She held her babies tight)
And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue
She was scared, she was broke
But all she knew was she was gonna do
What she had to
What she had to (what she had to)
Yeah, yeah, ooooh, what she had to
What she had to
My brother and me, Mama's tears falling like a Carolina rain
Cause she pulled out a gun the night before
Said he ain't gonna drink and hit me no more
She pulled the trigger on my father in a moment's rain
Thank God that gun wasn't loaded
Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive
Didn't care, anywhere but there that night
Now she held her babies tight
And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue
She was scared, she was broke
But all she knew was she was gonna do
What she had to
She got her a job in a trailer out west
It wasn't much but she was doing her best
Putting food on the table for her family
But then one day I came home from school
My Mama was crying alone in her room
She said, I lost my job and we're gonna lose the trailer too
And she got that volkswagon loaded
Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive
Didn't care, anywhere but there that night
She held her babies tight
And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue
She was scared, she was broke
But all she knew was she was gonna do
What she had to
Whenever things go wrong in my life
I just think of her, what it took that night
To get on that bus in a Carolina rain
Didn't know where to go or how she'd survive
Didn't care, anywhere but there that night
She held her babies tight
(She held her babies tight)
And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue
She was scared, she was broke
But all she knew was she was gonna do
What she had to
What she had to (what she had to)
Yeah, yeah, ooooh, what she had to
What she had to
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