"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.
We've finally found a way
To consume boredom every day
We've all become our personal gods
We've all become so sad and lost
So sad
So sad and lost
A billion balconies facing the sun
A billion faces turned to their screens
The perfect answer to camouflage our screams
A billion lies becoming the truth
An ecstasy of the eye
As wide as eternity tonight
We found expression for our hate
Without any kind of consequence
Who needs patience anymore
When all our pleasure's virtual
A billion balconies facing the sun
A billion faces turned to their screens
The perfect answer to camouflage our screams
A billion lies becoming the truth
An ecstasy of the eye
As wide as eternity tonight
To consume boredom every day
We've all become our personal gods
We've all become so sad and lost
So sad
So sad and lost
A billion balconies facing the sun
A billion faces turned to their screens
The perfect answer to camouflage our screams
A billion lies becoming the truth
An ecstasy of the eye
As wide as eternity tonight
We found expression for our hate
Without any kind of consequence
Who needs patience anymore
When all our pleasure's virtual
A billion balconies facing the sun
A billion faces turned to their screens
The perfect answer to camouflage our screams
A billion lies becoming the truth
An ecstasy of the eye
As wide as eternity tonight
Lyrics submitted by deltasunlight
A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun Lyrics as written by Nicholas Jones James Bradfield
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
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Ed Sheeran tells a story of unsuccessfully trying to feel “Amazing.” This track is about the being weighed down by emotional stress despite valiant attempts to find some positivity in the situation. This track was written by Ed Sheeran from the perspective of his friend. From the track, we see this person fall deeper into the negative thoughts and slide further down the path of mental torment with every lyric.
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
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“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.
its based on JG Ballards 1996 book Cocaine Nights. its about how to we keep our minds active when we are pluged into a fake world of TV and services.
"A billion balconies facing the sun; still, it means a final goodbye to wars and ideologies. But how do you energize people, give them some sense of community? A world lying on it's back is vulnerable to any cunning predator."
Could it be about TV and the vapid, comatose-like way people stare at it all day long, letting it turn your brain to mush, and how it is used to control people, eg: through propaganda and advertising? 'To consume boredom everyday' could possibly be a comment on advertisements offering more consumer goods people are told will dramatically improve their lives but don't, that just bring more boredom?
'Very inspired by John Gay, the philosopher... and JG Ballard's quote about everyone being their own movie star, and he said this in '56 whatever, '62, and I think the phrase is JG Ballard's- "A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun", and there's some of my favourite lines in there, y'know, it's just that idea of all our pleasures' virtual, we've finally found away to consume boredom everyday, just that idea of the minutiae of life being displayed for everyone to see, really, when it's just utterly tedious if you're living it, let alone expecting someone else to do it, and I do think it's the start... the drums- it's supposed to sound like Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, but it's one of the most terse lyrics on the record.'
This song, like many by the Manic Street Preachers, is about the 'spectacle' as described in Guy Debord's 1967 essay 'The Society of the Spectacle'.
It based on that and The Machine Stops by EM Forster. <br /> <br /> nme.com/blog/index.php
Obviously this was meant to be for "It's Not War"... Whoops, it's late... leave me alone! AAAHH!
'A billion lies becoming the truth' could refer to internet rumours, eg about celebrities, that are spread around and pushed forward as truths.
'We found expression for our hate' could be about people, happy with the distance and vague anonymity, posting hate comments on sites like Facebook and Twitter, airing their bigotry around. 'Without any kind of consequence' might have been true in 2010, but is now less so, if all the news reports and government hacking is anything to go by.
The song is about the internet.
nah, internet.
yeah, definitely the internet.
Funnily enough, I thought quite a few songs of the new album refer to internet culture - except for this one. It seemed to me they were talking about the media driven divide between Eastern and Western countries and how we are continuously reminded 'they're different from us' through the way in which reporting is localised. Regardless of whether countries are 'at war' or not, there's often a threatening angle in the way foreign countries are represented through how they practice religion or specifically with the Manics in mind, whether they're communist or not. for example.... "The End Of Love" is to me the end of tolerance. It's far more appealing in the media world to maintain the idea of a divide despite no actual waring. The US and Russia comes to mind... They stopped fighting years ago, but there's hardly ever a report on Russia that doesn't mention 'reds' or the 'cold war'.