"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.
On a sailboat I am
Slowly floating nowhere
Lost the memories of where I am and why
Black ocean churning
A million stars are burning
Planetariums were right about the sky
Once upon a day I set off on a journey
Wishing on the wind to take me far from home
Now I'm on the waves and I'm taking on water
Hard to see I won't always be alone
There was a time when August sun was high and centered on me
But it dipped behind my back and settled down
It used to square up with the land, used to size it in my hand
But it fell behind the line that meets the sky
Once upon a day I set off on a journey
Wishing on the wind to take me far from home
Now I'm on the waves and I'm taking on water
Hard to see I won't always be alone
Inside this storm
Whipping in the wind, my sail is torn
In other words, the ends I mend are not my own
Hard to see I won't always be alone
On a sailboat I am
Slowly floating nowhere
Hoping someday I'll wash upon someone else's shore
Slowly floating nowhere
Lost the memories of where I am and why
Black ocean churning
A million stars are burning
Planetariums were right about the sky
Once upon a day I set off on a journey
Wishing on the wind to take me far from home
Now I'm on the waves and I'm taking on water
Hard to see I won't always be alone
There was a time when August sun was high and centered on me
But it dipped behind my back and settled down
It used to square up with the land, used to size it in my hand
But it fell behind the line that meets the sky
Once upon a day I set off on a journey
Wishing on the wind to take me far from home
Now I'm on the waves and I'm taking on water
Hard to see I won't always be alone
Inside this storm
Whipping in the wind, my sail is torn
In other words, the ends I mend are not my own
Hard to see I won't always be alone
On a sailboat I am
Slowly floating nowhere
Hoping someday I'll wash upon someone else's shore
Lyrics submitted by giang, edited by sneakylemons, jhrussell
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
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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"
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How would you describe the feeling of being in love? For Ed Sheeran, the word is “Magical.” in HIS three-minute album opener, he makes an attempt to capture the beauty and delicacy of true love with words. He describes the magic of it all over a bright Pop song produced by Aaron Dessner.
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Page
Ed Sheeran
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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.
This is such an incredible song, and I've thought that since I heard the little preview he gave us a few months back on his blog. Lyrically AND musically, it's great. I absolutely can not wait for a studio recording (the recent live one is just not good enough quality). I think this song is actually pretty simple. I think it's sort of about being big at one point, then drifting off into nothingness when you get older and feel more alone. But there's a few twinges of hope that things will get better and might actually stay that way, in the lines "Hard to see I won't always be alone" and "then someday I'll wash upon someone else's shore".
Wow, it's pretty strange that almost nobody commented on this song! Actually, to me the "Hard to see I won't always be alone" part speaks about a person who is very comfortable with his loneliness, but at the same time he lets himself drift off to wherever life is driving him. He knows that, at some point, life will drive him away off that loneliness to "wash upon someone else's shore".