"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.
Mild apprehension
Blank dreams of the coming fun
Distort the odds of a turnaround
Gut screams out next to none
So turn it on
Tune it in
And stay inert
You say "I've got the backbone"
The back way to escape the gun
Climbing a tree with a missing limb
And not saving anyone
And now it hurts
To stay at home
And see
Flash
The mirror ball's throwing mold
You can't get a grip if there's nothing to hold
See the flash catch a white lily laugh and wilt
But if you must smash a glass first fill it to the hilt
Plants
As far as I know are still
Still bending toward the light
And if we dance
Until the heart explodes
It'll make this place ignite
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope it's just
A case of flash delirium
Here's a growing culture
Deep inside a corpse
Ages stuck together
Takin' it to the source
Timeless desperation
Pictures on a screen scream
"Hey people, what does it mean?"
Comfort keeps us nice
So quick to donate everything (nothing arrives)
Die wolken drifting blinding smiles circling (einkreisen)
And time's tingling spines
Attaching hands to floor
The rosy-tinted flash
The hot dog's getting cold
And you'll never be as good as the Rolling Stones
Watch the birds in the airport gathering dirt
Crowd the clean magazine chick lifting up her skirt
(Why close one eye and try to
Pledge allegiance to the sun
When plastic ghosts start terrorizing everyone
Geometric troops aligning
Carried up to the burial mounds
My earthbound heart is heavy
Your heartbeat keeps things light
Like the violence forever threatening the night
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope and trust)
Lines when I close my eyes and just
Aim blindly at the sun
And hear love
When the ghosts start singing terrorizing everyone
Geometric troops aligning
Carried up to the burial mounds with gold
It's a heavy load but your
You rhythm makes it light and explode
Like a violent star keeps threatening the night
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope and trust
That our heads won't bust
Sixty six fifty five red battleships
Forty earth-like planets
Three holes two tits
One fork in its side
Zero tears in their eyes
Sue the spiders
Sink the Welsh
Stab your Facebook
Sell sell sell
Undercooked
Overdone
Mass adulation not so funny
Poisoned honey
Pseudo science
Silly money
You're my honey
Blank dreams of the coming fun
Distort the odds of a turnaround
Gut screams out next to none
So turn it on
Tune it in
And stay inert
You say "I've got the backbone"
The back way to escape the gun
Climbing a tree with a missing limb
And not saving anyone
And now it hurts
To stay at home
And see
Flash
The mirror ball's throwing mold
You can't get a grip if there's nothing to hold
See the flash catch a white lily laugh and wilt
But if you must smash a glass first fill it to the hilt
Plants
As far as I know are still
Still bending toward the light
And if we dance
Until the heart explodes
It'll make this place ignite
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope it's just
A case of flash delirium
Here's a growing culture
Deep inside a corpse
Ages stuck together
Takin' it to the source
Timeless desperation
Pictures on a screen scream
"Hey people, what does it mean?"
Comfort keeps us nice
So quick to donate everything (nothing arrives)
Die wolken drifting blinding smiles circling (einkreisen)
And time's tingling spines
Attaching hands to floor
The rosy-tinted flash
The hot dog's getting cold
And you'll never be as good as the Rolling Stones
Watch the birds in the airport gathering dirt
Crowd the clean magazine chick lifting up her skirt
(Why close one eye and try to
Pledge allegiance to the sun
When plastic ghosts start terrorizing everyone
Geometric troops aligning
Carried up to the burial mounds
My earthbound heart is heavy
Your heartbeat keeps things light
Like the violence forever threatening the night
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope and trust)
Lines when I close my eyes and just
Aim blindly at the sun
And hear love
When the ghosts start singing terrorizing everyone
Geometric troops aligning
Carried up to the burial mounds with gold
It's a heavy load but your
You rhythm makes it light and explode
Like a violent star keeps threatening the night
And even if this hall collapses
I can stand by my pillar of hope and trust
That our heads won't bust
Sixty six fifty five red battleships
Forty earth-like planets
Three holes two tits
One fork in its side
Zero tears in their eyes
Sue the spiders
Sink the Welsh
Stab your Facebook
Sell sell sell
Undercooked
Overdone
Mass adulation not so funny
Poisoned honey
Pseudo science
Silly money
You're my honey
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Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
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"
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.
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
Alright so what i noticed in one little part. after bens throat starts singing the general or whoever he is is freeing ben of his inner demons, and pulls out an electric eel....? reference to something else hint hint I dont though i would like to know the meaning behind all the lil things goin on. are there more little symbols that represent the past MGMT? haha i have no idea. but i would like to know. so if anyone finds anything interesting out. i wanna see haha
i think the eel is a f**king big phallic symbol, especially when the general sticks it in that machine which um wait let's see oh i know looks one hell of a lot like a vagina!<br /> <br /> and then the machine blows up, at the would-be moment of fertilization, so it blows up at the very moment a new human starts to exist within it. and the blowing up shows how nature can't contain man.