"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.
Herman the Bull and Tracey the sheep
Transgenic milk containing human protein
Their bacteria cheaper than baby food
Attention today
Today it's a cow, tomorrow it's you
African Punch and Judy show at half the price
A hundred thousand watch Giant Haystacks in a Bombay fight
Overjoyed, me and Stephen Hawking, we laugh
We missed the sex revolution
When we failed the physical
When we failed the physical
Herman the Bull and Tracey the sheep
Transgenic milk containing human protein
Their bacteria cheaper than baby food
Attention today
Today it's a cow, tomorrow it's you
African Punch and Judy show at half the price
A hundred thousand watch Giant Haystacks in a Bombay fight
Overjoyed, me and Stephen Hawking, we laugh
We missed the sex revolution
When we failed the physical
When we failed the physical
Transgenic milk containing human protein
Their bacteria cheaper than baby food
Attention today
Today it's a cow, tomorrow it's you
African Punch and Judy show at half the price
A hundred thousand watch Giant Haystacks in a Bombay fight
Overjoyed, me and Stephen Hawking, we laugh
We missed the sex revolution
When we failed the physical
When we failed the physical
Herman the Bull and Tracey the sheep
Transgenic milk containing human protein
Their bacteria cheaper than baby food
Attention today
Today it's a cow, tomorrow it's you
African Punch and Judy show at half the price
A hundred thousand watch Giant Haystacks in a Bombay fight
Overjoyed, me and Stephen Hawking, we laugh
We missed the sex revolution
When we failed the physical
When we failed the physical
Lyrics submitted by deltasunlight
Me and Stephen Hawking Lyrics as written by Nicholas Jones James Bradfield
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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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.
Great version of a great song,
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Herman the Bull and Tracy the sheep were early genetically modified (or 'transgenic') animals, produced by experiments in the early 1990s to manipulate milk production. Normal animal milk is not suitable for very young human children due it missing certain key proteins that a human mother's milk contains. By giving them certain human genes, scientists were able to breed animals whose milk (or the milk of his female offspring, in Herman's case) also contained the required proteins. The idea is that these animals can be industrially farmed, and their milk can be sold for children in developing countries instead of more expensive food supplements. The "African Punch and Judy show" and reference to Bombay is presumably about the exploitative relationship rich countries have with more poorer ones.
"Today it's a cow, tomorrow it's you" is a warning that genetic modification will not stop at altering animals, and will eventually be used on humans. The "me and Stephen Hawking" chorus also relates to this. Despite the flippant tone, I think what he's pointing out is that Stephen Hawking, as a carrier of a (possibly) genetically inherited disease, might have been aborted prior to his birth had genetic screening revealed him as a carrier of familial neuromuscular dystrophy, thus robbing science of one of its greatest minds. The "sex revolution" he envisages therefore, is not a positive scenario, but one in which controlled reproduction becomes the norm, and those considered genetically inferior, such as Hawking or himself, are eliminated from the population. Eugenics is a theme he returns to in Virginia State Epileptic Colony.
"We missed the sex revolution When we failed the physical"
What awesome lyrics...!!
Love this song.
Think it must be about the fact that we've got all this cross-breed testing and everything... and you kinda think what the hell is the point? Can't we leave things as we are? Why must we, as humans interfere with every natural thing on this planet...
Very catchy song.
I think this song is decrying the future" cloning, engineered food, were both hot topics in the mid-90s. People freaked out when faced with the moral question of how cloning humans will be handled. "Today it's a cow, tomorrow it's you."
"African Punch and Judy show at half the price"
I think refers to the capitalist phenomenon of outsourcing labor to countries that could get it cheaper. This was just beginning when Richey wrote this around mid to late 1994. So it is impressive he was on to it this early. And hopefully this won't start any Tupac-like rumors that he's still out there writing new songs. It just shows how frightening his intellect was. (Yeah, I believe he's dead personally.)
"A hundred thousand watch Giant Haystacks in a Bombay fight."
Giant Haystacks was a famous British professional wrestler, an icon of working class England. Having him "in a Bombay fight" might refer to the fight the working class UK will have with India over outsourced labor jobs. Not in a racist way, since Richey was hardly a BNP-sympathizer, but in the way that's there's only so many factory jobs to go around and if another country can do them cheaper, very few corporations care if they're taking them away from the west.
"Me and Stephen Hawking, we laugh We missed the sex revolution When we failed the physical."
Such a great line. And it's shocking the same guy who wrote the pitch-black outlook of The Holy Bible came up with it a year or so later. It's probably just a punchline. But if you want to look deeper at it, maybe it is saying Hawking, due to his physical handicap is really just an (incredible) brain without much of a outer body. And Richey probably saw him as a much more dignified human being for it. If you read Richey's interviews, he really saw himself as anti-sexual, so I guess he identified with that. Oddly.
There is some doubt whether Richey actually wrote these lyrics. Rumours has it that the 'long-ignored book of Richey's lyrics' was a publicity stunt, and the lyrics were purposefully peppered with 1980s & 1990s references for verisimilitude.
Rumour has that Richey didn't write the lyrics on "Journal For Plague Lovers"? Was there ever more concrete evidence than that I ask you? I gotta say I'm almost offended by that remark... I don't believe the Manic's would be so careless and calculating. However, I have no doubt that Richey's lyrics were complex and convoluted and it was up to the band to turn his writing into actual songs and so its reasonable that they altered passages, but anyone who has followed the band for a long while, can see these are typical Richey song lyrics. <br /> <br />
Yeah its defiantly an un-paranoid view of what human genetic engineering could actually mean in the future, or have meant for Hawking in utero had the technology been developed long ago. The song has an undercurrent of a familiar Manics target - fascism. Whereas Hitler for example wanted to create a pure race through genocide, genetically altering human's pre-birth to "eradicate flaws" is hardly a long stretch from nazi-ism. I think they are spot on too.
What the hell does that line actually mean?
I think it means they, for various reasons, cannot have sex. This is a relief to Richey.