"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.
High on a cliff in Mexico
Staring down at the rocks and the sea below
I can hear the church bells ring
I can hear the choir
I remember the night she left
I drove to the station in the pouring rain
Sat all night behind my big iron desk
The oil on the water made a rainbow
At the end of this bone white gravel road
They both lie sleeping on a feather bed
And her hair is black as the sky at night
But her eyes are gray like the moon
You can run but you can't hide
You can run but you can't hide
You said you love me but I know you lied
You said you love me but I know you lied
Staring down at the rocks and the sea below
I can hear the church bells ring
I can hear the choir
I remember the night she left
I drove to the station in the pouring rain
Sat all night behind my big iron desk
The oil on the water made a rainbow
At the end of this bone white gravel road
They both lie sleeping on a feather bed
And her hair is black as the sky at night
But her eyes are gray like the moon
You can run but you can't hide
You can run but you can't hide
You said you love me but I know you lied
You said you love me but I know you lied
Lyrics submitted by SongMeanings
Bad News from Home Lyrics as written by Randy Newman
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Downtown Music Publishing, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Fast Car
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The Night We Met
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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"
Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
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This is about bronies. They communicate by stomping.
Dreamwalker
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I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
Punchline
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.
What!? No comments on this, possibly the greatest murder ballad ever written? Please, please comment, there is SO much interesting discussion to be had from this song. Anyway I think it's almost certainly about a man whose wife or lover leaves him for another, and the kills them both. All I could find from the Great Randy Newman himself was "It sounds life the guy's gonna do something bad," and describing it as a "Little drama."
@MagusMirificus Another good murder ballad was on the Little Criminals album called In Germany Before The War. And there was another body of water involved.
"Gonna do something bad" could also mean suicide. The opening makes me think that the singer is contemplating jumping from that cliff. But if it's suicide he shouldn't be hearing a metaphorical heavenly choir. So the church sounds are real and are from his lover's funeral.
If he's already killed her (or them) then the question is why isn't he locked up somewhere? He "drove to the station"... He's a cop. Perhaps the sheriff because he has a "big iron desk." And that's how he got away with murder, but now he's being haunted.
Haunted by her ghost! The last four lines are spoken by her. He can't hide from from her. He never loved her and that's why she cheated on him.
Or he's escaped justice by fleeing to Mexico. He can still hear the music from the funeral. He's on the run, but he can't escape his guilt.
I love the lyrics of this song, even more than the song itself. Anyway, it's pretty clear it's about a man whose wife has left him...feel free to continue your analysis
A chilling, noir-ish song, as the other posts states, told from the perspective of a man whose wife has left him and who has followed her and her new lover to Mexico to murder them. The song ends with him standing on a road near “where they both lie sleeping on a feather bed”, ominously suggesting what is to follow.
Murder ballad, plain and simple.
It is a pretty evocative song -absolutely dripping with foreboding or menace. My original thought was that he was simply contemplating suicide. I thought the bells might be her wedding bells. I didn't think he had killed them, though that's a solid theory too. Agree with bertiebottbag that he must be a police chief which makes the "you can run but you can't hide" lyric work. However he could be telling himself that because he knows he will have to go on living in the knowledge she is with somebody else.
I'd say it's pretty clear that she and her companion are dead - caskets are lined with down, making the "feather bed". The question is whether he did it or someone else did. I like to think it's a revenge thing - telling whoever killed her that they can run but they can't hide. Probably a murder ballad though. Simple answers are usually the right ones.
Based on the good info provided so far here, it seems to me that the bad news from home is this guy himself, the one who is speaking the song, narrating this sad tale.
He's bad news because his home is in the U.S., but now he finds himself on a Mexican seaside cliff just down the road from where the cheating lovers lie. He is pausing for a few seconds, to immortalize his story for Randy Newman, before carrying out his homicidal intentions.
The bells and choir might be tolling and wafting from a church in a nearby little Mexican town. Or perhaps,these sounds are revisiting him from his wedding day in that blissful time when his wife lied to him that she loved him.
The night she disappeared, he was worried sick for her. He was awake all night. This thought didn't pass through his mind that night-- but now he knows . . she lied.
Now that he is with her once again, he knows that she can run but she cannot hide.
The illicit pair, as insinuated before, are down the road from this cliff overhanging the sea, and they are asleep on a feather-bed in a rented room of their fugitive-lovers' hacienda.
Because the moon is not gray except when a cloud comes over it, his wife's eyes are gray like the moon because they are closed.
Also, she has lyin' eyes she can't hide.
Her hair is black as the sky at night because there's no light in the room.
The oil on the water, and iron desk, I don't know. Maybe he pushed their car over the cliff and the rainbow signifies there's no hope for any of the three. He is about to walk back.
Just saw him in Charleston. He played it. I can die happy now. I don't know what it is about this song but it is so dark, so ominous and so beautiful I absolutely adore it. It is my favorite Newman song and one of my favorites period. And yeah, he's going to kill them both.
I always envisioned the "station" as a gas station because when I was a kid my little league coach shot his estranged wife's lover. The dead guy owned a gas station and my coach camped out in the woods across the street with a rifle. "Oil on the water" made me think of leaked oil and gas at a gas station.