"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 have one chance.
One chance to get everything right.
We have one chance, one chance.
And if we're lucky we might.
My friends, my habits, my family,
They mean so much to me.
I just don't think that it's right.
I've seen so many ships sail in,
Just to head back out again and go off sinking.
I'm just a box in a cage. I'm just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box in a cage.
Didn't mean to laugh, didn't know I had.
Didn't know the better part of what you said
'cause in your head you are not home.
Didn't get the joke. Didn't mean to poke another,
Just to save myself
From some something something or another one.
Well walk home.
I'm just a box in a cage. I'm just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box in a cage.
We have one chance,
One chance to get everything right.
My friends, my habits, my family,
They mean so much to me.
I just don't think that it's right.
I've seen so many ships sail in,
Just to head back out again and go off sinking.
One chance to get everything right.
We have one chance, one chance.
And if we're lucky we might.
My friends, my habits, my family,
They mean so much to me.
I just don't think that it's right.
I've seen so many ships sail in,
Just to head back out again and go off sinking.
I'm just a box in a cage. I'm just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box in a cage.
Didn't mean to laugh, didn't know I had.
Didn't know the better part of what you said
'cause in your head you are not home.
Didn't get the joke. Didn't mean to poke another,
Just to save myself
From some something something or another one.
Well walk home.
I'm just a box in a cage. I'm just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box, just a box in a cage.
I'm just a box in a cage.
We have one chance,
One chance to get everything right.
My friends, my habits, my family,
They mean so much to me.
I just don't think that it's right.
I've seen so many ships sail in,
Just to head back out again and go off sinking.
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More Featured Meanings
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
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"
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.
Amazing
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
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
Ed Sheeran
“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.
That open box in a cage thing makes me think that that line is talking about how most people are conformists and that makes them perfectly content with not thinking about things in ways, or just things, most people don't. Then the people who do are not accepted in normal society, when they know more about life and things with deep meanings. So Isaac thinks about these things, and it opens his eyes, making him an "open box in a cage" with the cage being society...
...Or maybe I think that because I hate society, and spend time thinking about life and ways to live better and to not conform to things i don't want to conform to.
"I'm just a box in a cage."
I'm sure Isaac didn't intend this line to mean what I think it means. But I think this line sums up the objective human condition pretty well. We're just perceptual beings (boxes) in a Universe where we're bound by the laws of physics (a cage).
@Theo Reo not necessarily. Its up to interpretation though. Could be something more simple, down to earth. A box is a regular shape, straight lines and 90 degrees angles, just something regular that is inside of an object (probably the same shape) that has it constrained, being a box it cant scape and wont probably change its form to do so.
We definitely only have one chance in life and Isaac definitely seems upset to see many of his friends die (ships sailing off and sinking). And he shows the sad state of our lives, where we're just trapped (our bodies are the box and the world is the cage).
Isaac's been using "I'm just a box in a cage" since 1996, maybe even earlier. I guess he finally found where to put it. It did fit quite well in Trucker's Atlas, though.
This is definitely one of my favorite MM songs, although every time I try to declare one song my favorite, I end up finding another I like better.
I agree with what all of you guys have said (very insightful!), but there's a little detail I'd like to get your thoughts on.
During the second "I'm just a box in a cage." refrain, there's a specific change to the lyrics that caught my attention:
"I'm just a box in a cage. An OPEN box in a cage. I'm just a box, just a box in a cage. I'm just..."
This is pretty interesting to me, because my interpretation is the same as some of yours: We get this one great chance at life, but we have to spend it trapped within a trap, implying a sense of futility that no matter how much we make of our one chance, we're still bound by the "cage". But this variation, "An open box in a cage" sort of feels like a more personal statement. I'm not terribly familiar with his personal life, except for the bits and pieces I've read in researching their music, but many of their songs - present one included - have this sort of frustrated sense of release to them, as if being able to write this music gives his thoughts and emotions an exposure to others (the open box), yet he's still trapped within in the limitations of the "cage", be it mortality, the Universe, what have you. There's definitely an underlying sense of futility and mortality in this song, which is why I think it connects so well with people.
Or I'm I just REALLY bored and looking into this too much?
okay so this past halloween i dressed up as i box in a cage, and like NOBODY got it! just some 18 year old dressed as rainbow brite and some indeterminate ewoks. what gives? definitely not worth running into things every five minutes, i'll tell you that. however, i have to say that i believe you unwittingly existentialist interpreters are right on in your assessments. and that this is definitely a better song than the smashing pumpkins' "in spite all my rage i am still just a rat in a cage" version from a few years back. great song, methinks. went on my best of 2004 mix for my fellow boxes in cages, aka friends.
This song (quite frankly) states that we have one chance in life, and how lucky one would be to have a life where they didnt mess up. It is interesting to see on the new album lyrics reflecting Issac's thoughts of death (considering a few close friends of his died since M&A)
good song, great guitars. it means just what it says, we have one chance. i was unaware of his loss. who were they? just good friends? thats sad X_x
king you definately hit the nail right on the head. and this song is absolutely amazing, one of my personal fav's of mm. i'm surprised there isn't more people commenting on this song. Good job guys.
'Unwittingly existentialist'? That is an interesting observation. But, wow, very true. Touche' pussycat.