"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.
I'm surrounded, each doorway covered by at least twenty men. And they're going to take me and throw me in prison. I ain't coming back again. When I was younger, handsomer and stronger, I felt like I could do anything. But all of these people making all these faces didn't seem like my kith and kin. Colin Kincaid from the twelfth grade, I guess you could say he was my best friend. He lived in a big tall house out on Westfall where we would hide when the rain rolled in. We went out one night and took a flashlight, out with these two girls Colin knew from Kenwood Christian. One was named Laurie, that's what the story said next week in the Guardian. And when I killed her it was so easy that I wanted to kill her again. I got down on both of my knees and….she ain't coming back again. Now, with all these cameras focused on my face, you'd think they could see it through my skin. They're looking for evil, thinking they can trace it, but evil don't look like anything.
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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.
I think it is taking it all a bit too literally to say that it is specifically about that incident. It's about murder in general and about how as Will Sheff said "I remember my co-workers looking at him and looking at him for the evil on his face. You wanted to see the evil, but it wasn't there." It obviously wasn't about any particular murder, just about those murders that seem completely senseless but are performed by seemingly normal people.
I've only just learnt about this band and this song is a particular favourite of mine. I wanted to play it on my radio show but there has been a serial killer on the loose and I don't think I could get away with playing it so soon after they caught the supposed perputrator. This is a similar situation really and the weirdest thing is that it's happened in my town (Ipswich in England) where that sort of thing isn't heard of. It's been weird.
I came to SongMeanings to figure out the exact words to this line:
"But all of these people making all these faces didn’t seem like my kith and kin."
Makes me think of Meursault from Camus' "The Stranger." That, along with Laurie's murder.
This song reminds me of a Dutch/French film "Spoorloos (The Vanishing)." The antagonist of the film rescues a young girl from drowning and is praised as a hero. To determine whether he was actually as good as everyone seemed to believe he was, he decided to perform the most evil act he could think of to balance out the good deed. So he kidnaps a woman and buries her alive. I guess the parallel between the film and the song then would be the theme that nobody is inherently good or evil, that the people who seem and are capable of the greatest acts are just as capable of the most wicked acts.
Country music was made for singing about murder, and this song is about how we just want to condemn people who do bad things without bothering to think about what may have caused them to do those things.
Or maybe it's just that you never can tell who the bad apple is going to be, take your pick.
I think the idea behind this song is that even oo or normal people are capable of doing really bad things. Because he's not asking for us to feel sorry for him (like he does in "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks," but he just makes himself sound like a normal guy (who happened to kill a girl he didn't know).
I agree with the above statements, although I would object to classifying OR as country. If you ever get a chance to see OR live, do it. Their version of "Westfall" is sped up and rocked out. At the show I attended a mini mosh pit even formed. Try to picture that.
i think its about a guy who killed for no reason at all...just to do it. thats just how things are...you do things to do it...and this guy just happened to do a very bad thing. i love how the song speeds up at the end...its beautiful. 'she ain't comin' back again' i totally love the "lalalalalala" stuff...i never know where to place my "la la's" in my songs...inspiring.
"There were these murder cases in Austin where these two girls were working in a yogart shop and these three college guys went to rob the place and killed and mutilated them. I worked for the state at the time and heard the details they didn't report -- how they cut them open and filled them with frozen yogart. They caught one of the kids that did it, and there he was, on TV, and I remember my co-workers looking at him and looking at him for the evil on his face. You wanted to see the evil, but it wasn't there." - Will Sheff
austin.about.com/od/cityservices/p/springsteenr.htm
this is the link to the details of the murder. interestingly, there is no colin kinkaid affiliated with the murders.
absolutely perfect song about a horribly tragic event.
This song is so haunting, but its so great.