"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.
Moving clocks run so slow
I can't take my eyes off you
There's too many hands
To keep my eye on
Looking towards the light
Look a little cross-eyed
Sounds a little tongue-tied
The fast approaching midnight
We're locked out
The fast approaching midnight
So, you know, you take a little me
And I take a little you
We're all part of the century
So hold me down now, hold me down
A bitter disappointment
And I was restless, I was restless
You're winning me over
You're winning me over
Can't take my eyes off you
There's too many hands
To keep my eye on
The fast approaching midnight
We're locked out
The fast approaching midnight
So, you know, you take a little me
And I take a little you
We're all part of the century
I can't take my eyes off you
There's too many hands
To keep my eye on
Looking towards the light
Look a little cross-eyed
Sounds a little tongue-tied
The fast approaching midnight
We're locked out
The fast approaching midnight
So, you know, you take a little me
And I take a little you
We're all part of the century
So hold me down now, hold me down
A bitter disappointment
And I was restless, I was restless
You're winning me over
You're winning me over
Can't take my eyes off you
There's too many hands
To keep my eye on
The fast approaching midnight
We're locked out
The fast approaching midnight
So, you know, you take a little me
And I take a little you
We're all part of the century
Lyrics submitted by Adelais
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Fast Car
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This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
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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.
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I think this song is about Einstein's special relativity theory; it basically states that a clock moving with a very fast speed, say 40% of the speed of light, runs slower to the eye of the observer if he or she doesn't move. 'Looking towards the light' means that 'time' is in fact light according to the Lightcone theory, 1 lightsecond equals 1 second therefore it equals time.
So, now that we know it is about time and the relativity of it's interpretation, the third sentence gives us a hint of what way time moves. 'Too many hands to keep my eye on' refers to the singer looking at the clock because he can't wait for 'time' to become midnight. Like the day before your birthday when you were a kid. You would (at least I would) look at the clock every minute to see what time it was. The singer is 'restless' and can't wait for midnight because he really wants to be with (probably) another person which will happen at midnight.
Atleast that's what I came up with today in the train....
Great energy in this song; love it! I'll speculate that it's about having met or seen someone you're attracted to and how time is either going so slow or too fast for things to happen between the two of you?
Btw, I forgot the 'look a little cross-eyed' sentence referring to Minkowski's space-time diagram and the 'tongue-tied' because everybody always has such a hard time explaining the space-time theory explaining to other people.
Rodka90xxl, that seems absolutely absurd.
I don't think you'd name a song "moving clocks run slow" if you weren't alluding to the special theory in some way
I think the general concept of the theory may be alluded to, but I don't think that it's the primary issue that the author is bringing up. I interpret this song to be mostly about feeling one's own mortality, or a sort of resigned ode to life moving too fast, heading towards death. In other words, "looking towards the light," is about staring at one's eventual death, which makes him tongue-tied/cross-eyed. Additionally, I interpret midnight as the final hour, or the end of one's life. Going a bit further, I interpret lines like "You take a little bit of me, and I take a little bit of you" to be talking about how he takes his time, while time takes him...time is slowly "winning him over" as the hours of his life go by idly.
Also, on an up note, I think it's possible that there's meant to be a romantic parallel being drawn here.
The "moving hands" and "we're locked out" lines seem to suggest that there's another person in this predicament, but I never fully got that.
you're right. with the old metaphor of "life is a day," suddenly, the phrase "we're fast approaching midnight" becomes clear. The moving clocks, refers to the clocks with hands. and how if you seem to stare at the hour hand, it just never moves. but even though they don't move his life seems to be zipping by so fast.