Your car, your ability to just drive away--this represents freedom (perhaps only temporary) from the things in day-to-day life which tie you down: your marriage, your job, etc.
The "once-red lips" probably refer to a wife you once fell for, but who doesn't seem as appealing anymore.
A lot of irony here: "free yourself from the chance of a lifetime" suggests that the American dream of a suburban house with a wife and 2.5 kids is not exactly the kind of life Bob hoped he would have (assuming the protagonist of the song is in fact Bob)
"You can be anyone they told you to" is bitterly ironic, and perhaps one of the most brilliant lines Bob has ever written. How many times have you heard people say, "You can be anything you want, if you just work hard enough at it." The person singing these words has lived long enough to know that chasing your dreams isn't so easy...that there are all kinds of pressures holding you back.
Of course, no one could possibly appreciate the meaning of this song without hearing how much it rocks.
Your car, your ability to just drive away--this represents freedom (perhaps only temporary) from the things in day-to-day life which tie you down: your marriage, your job, etc.
The "once-red lips" probably refer to a wife you once fell for, but who doesn't seem as appealing anymore.
A lot of irony here: "free yourself from the chance of a lifetime" suggests that the American dream of a suburban house with a wife and 2.5 kids is not exactly the kind of life Bob hoped he would have (assuming the protagonist of the song is in fact Bob)
"You can be anyone they told you to" is bitterly ironic, and perhaps one of the most brilliant lines Bob has ever written. How many times have you heard people say, "You can be anything you want, if you just work hard enough at it." The person singing these words has lived long enough to know that chasing your dreams isn't so easy...that there are all kinds of pressures holding you back.
Of course, no one could possibly appreciate the meaning of this song without hearing how much it rocks.