"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 can feel a difference
Today, a difference
All of us in our tents
Fearing god like a mistress
We lay on the rocks in the sun
Watching you and your mama row in
I sat up and blinked when you appeared
So pale you were nearly clear
Later I stumbled to my bed
All alone in the branches
I laid in the dark thinking about
All of my friends and their changes
And I do not know
If you know
just what you have done
You are the sweetest one
I have ever laid my eyes upon
It's a beautiful town
With the rain coming down
Blackberry, rosemary
Jimmy Crack Corn
You've got the run of the place
Now that you're running around
And may kindness
Kindness, kindness abound
In this hour of our lives
Hour of effortless plenty
How do we know which parts of our hearts want what
With such base generosity?
Taking so many photographs, so amazed
We've never seen a baby so newlyborn
And when the bulbs do flash as bright as morning
The crowd keeps on gathering like an electric storm
The phantom of love moves among us at will
Each phantom-limb lost has got an angel
So confused like the wagging bobbed-tail of a bulldog
Kindness, kindness prevails
Kindness prevails
Ties and rails, ties and rails fall into line bearing kindness
Where will you go, if not here?
What will you say when you write to us?
And this is a world of terrible hardship everywhere
And I search for words to set you at ease
But there, in the looking-glass, a kite is soaring
Stilling my warring heart and my trembling knees
Clean as a breeze, bright as the day
All of the people gather to say
"Sweet Esme
Sweet Esme, oh, oh, oh"
I believe love will always surround you
Brave as a bear with a heart rare and true
But if you are scared, if you are blue
I have prepared this small song for you
"Sweet Esme
Sweet Esme, ooh"
"Sweet Esme
Sweet Esme, ooh"
"Sweet Esme, Esme
Sweet Esme, Sweet Esme, ooh"
Today, a difference
All of us in our tents
Fearing god like a mistress
We lay on the rocks in the sun
Watching you and your mama row in
I sat up and blinked when you appeared
So pale you were nearly clear
Later I stumbled to my bed
All alone in the branches
I laid in the dark thinking about
All of my friends and their changes
And I do not know
If you know
just what you have done
You are the sweetest one
I have ever laid my eyes upon
It's a beautiful town
With the rain coming down
Blackberry, rosemary
Jimmy Crack Corn
You've got the run of the place
Now that you're running around
And may kindness
Kindness, kindness abound
In this hour of our lives
Hour of effortless plenty
How do we know which parts of our hearts want what
With such base generosity?
Taking so many photographs, so amazed
We've never seen a baby so newlyborn
And when the bulbs do flash as bright as morning
The crowd keeps on gathering like an electric storm
The phantom of love moves among us at will
Each phantom-limb lost has got an angel
So confused like the wagging bobbed-tail of a bulldog
Kindness, kindness prevails
Kindness prevails
Ties and rails, ties and rails fall into line bearing kindness
Where will you go, if not here?
What will you say when you write to us?
And this is a world of terrible hardship everywhere
And I search for words to set you at ease
But there, in the looking-glass, a kite is soaring
Stilling my warring heart and my trembling knees
Clean as a breeze, bright as the day
All of the people gather to say
"Sweet Esme
Sweet Esme, oh, oh, oh"
I believe love will always surround you
Brave as a bear with a heart rare and true
But if you are scared, if you are blue
I have prepared this small song for you
"Sweet Esme
Sweet Esme, ooh"
"Sweet Esme
Sweet Esme, ooh"
"Sweet Esme, Esme
Sweet Esme, Sweet Esme, ooh"
Lyrics submitted by mutinyinheaven_x
Esme Lyrics as written by Joanna Newsom
Lyrics © ROUGH TRADE PUBLISHING
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Fast Car
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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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I really like this song. I wonder what it's going to be called in the end. She's said before that this is not the title of the song.
I really hope her new album comes out in September like rumored.