"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.
Midnight at the theatre, news is coming over
Of the murder of the prophet, the one we all believed in
Everybody’s scuttling, and everybody’s nervous
The man who makes the lightning has gone missing in the forest
And on the television comes the evil Nikki Danjo
Who proclaims himself the regent even though he is a rat
He’s got forward-sweeping eyebrows, an awful fearless forehead
And the scroll that he is holding tells the future of the world
And all the while the spider comet hurtles towards Earth
A pink and white calamity with an icy blue eye
An electric-coloured coma mane, a horrid ion tail
Danjo grins and grimaces like his head is on a spring
And now the night must lengthen to a universal sealant
While the oil wells in the desert burn all the oil away
The ruin of a wooden ship suspended between stacks of rock
And Nikki Danjo lives in it, as if in the Ark on Ararat
The dinosaurs return to the earth dressed up as stenographers
Committing dactylography, they copulate like dogs
And the ground has got so hot now that the only way to walk on it
Is on stilts built like chopsticks for tottering refugees
We reel injustice in on strings, don’t believe in anything
Between the jagged chimneys floats the nightmare of a moon
It’s down to Ennosuke, the great kabuki actor
To save us from the regent and put the rat to death
A pterodactyl cackle is lingering behind you
Obey the spider comet, whatever it may say
Of the murder of the prophet, the one we all believed in
Everybody’s scuttling, and everybody’s nervous
The man who makes the lightning has gone missing in the forest
And on the television comes the evil Nikki Danjo
Who proclaims himself the regent even though he is a rat
He’s got forward-sweeping eyebrows, an awful fearless forehead
And the scroll that he is holding tells the future of the world
And all the while the spider comet hurtles towards Earth
A pink and white calamity with an icy blue eye
An electric-coloured coma mane, a horrid ion tail
Danjo grins and grimaces like his head is on a spring
And now the night must lengthen to a universal sealant
While the oil wells in the desert burn all the oil away
The ruin of a wooden ship suspended between stacks of rock
And Nikki Danjo lives in it, as if in the Ark on Ararat
The dinosaurs return to the earth dressed up as stenographers
Committing dactylography, they copulate like dogs
And the ground has got so hot now that the only way to walk on it
Is on stilts built like chopsticks for tottering refugees
We reel injustice in on strings, don’t believe in anything
Between the jagged chimneys floats the nightmare of a moon
It’s down to Ennosuke, the great kabuki actor
To save us from the regent and put the rat to death
A pterodactyl cackle is lingering behind you
Obey the spider comet, whatever it may say
Lyrics submitted by Mellow_Harsher
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Fast Car
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This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
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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.
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Great version of a great song,
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