"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 found the garden gate unlocked so I went in
And picked the perfect spot where I could bury my youth
But hounds of love and hounds of war
Hounds galore
Those hoary hounds were pouncing
Each with waxy wooden tooths
Remember when it dawned on you
The day that you knew that
You could live forever and still never make a masterpiece
To shut those pups up in the least
But everybody knows
That’s the way it goes
Even if you die on the ocean
Every Wednesday afternoon
Me and you bleeding on the newspaper classifieds
Dragging out the drinking down for high school kids who
Died out on the highway in the middle of the night
Sing a song that means you love
Everyone who’s ever come within the sound
Of any of your cloudy words
But get your song together first
Save it ‘til you’re sure
Hang it on the door
Sing it from the top of the mountain
‘Til everybody knows
Exactly how it goes
Even if you die on the ocean
Even when you die on the ocean
Children screaming speeches into microscopic tape recorders
Wired to the mire of the moat
And I was still at odds with several thousand nonbelievers
Both above and below
Smoking silhouettes outside the school with all the cymbalists
The simplest way I knew to go
And we could talk ourselves into the dreary deeps
Before we realized there was a hole in the boat
And everybody’s answer to the world
Was “We should start another world!”
And I said, “What do you propose? Because you know
The world that we’ve got going now has to be
The hardest place I’ve ever been.
It’s got me shrinking in my skin, but then again, I guess
That everybody knows
That’s just the way it goes.”
Even if you die on the ocean
There’s just so many crowns
And everybody drowns
Everybody dies on the ocean.
Lyrics submitted by RedDwarf
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
This is about bronies. They communicate by stomping.
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,
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.
Page
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
Everybody dies on the ocean!