"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.
Conceal your deepest worries
Confine your thoughts inside
The walls you built of damaged pride
The light in your eyes failing
Like you're adrift
Like night pretending to be day
These storms subside
Though the past, the unwanted memories, are holding onto you
All the power in the universe conspires to carry you
Truths you find through your adversities will defend you
As your powers and all your energies conspire to carry you
The adversary to your soul
The blackest thoughts
That try to poison you
These storms subside
Lay down your greatest burden
Relinquish that which has control of you
And let yourself through
Though it seems the past and the future look the same
Suffice to say you're still here
Confine your thoughts inside
The walls you built of damaged pride
The light in your eyes failing
Like you're adrift
Like night pretending to be day
These storms subside
Though the past, the unwanted memories, are holding onto you
All the power in the universe conspires to carry you
Truths you find through your adversities will defend you
As your powers and all your energies conspire to carry you
The adversary to your soul
The blackest thoughts
That try to poison you
These storms subside
Lay down your greatest burden
Relinquish that which has control of you
And let yourself through
Though it seems the past and the future look the same
Suffice to say you're still here
Lyrics submitted by interface2x
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More Featured Meanings
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
Cajun Girl
Little Feat
Little Feat
Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
Dreamwalker
Silent Planet
Silent Planet
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.
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
American Town
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran shares a short story of reconnecting with an old flame on “American Town.” The track is about a holiday Ed Sheeran spends with his countrywoman who resides in America. The two are back together after a long period apart, and get around to enjoying a bunch of fun activities while rekindling the flames of their romance.
To me, this song means exactly the opposite of what most people here have concluded. Most interpretations here are that we must "dump our baggage" or "get rid of" the bad things from our past.
What he says is the opposite. Everything you've experienced is what you are. All your unwanted memories are actually making you the person you are. They "carry you". Accept them, don't drop them. Relish even the bad parts of your past and you'll find that all the energies in the universe will carry you.
I can't say I feel this way myself, carried by the universe. I'm not a big believer in spirituality. But I do believe that we must accept what has happened. The past cannot be changed except through our interpretation of it.
VNV NATION "SONG MEANINGS" INSIDE 15 page interview with Ronan Harris.
dancemusic.about.com/od/artistshomepages/a/VnVNationInt.htm
see my Farthest Star comment, so I don't have to say it all over again...these are the most spiritual, most straight-up lyrics from VNV...the words are in your face this time, not much to "interpret" in my opinion.
wow, I just realized, this is exactly what I went through 5 years ago. I wish I could get into detail. I need to write a book, except it won't be fiction. To be short, for me, when the light has touched your mind the first time, all the darkness built up inside surfaces, and you need to deal with it, and get over it all, until that light can consume you and you can share it with others.
Be Yoursef. Its simple.
Top paragraph defines what keeps one afraid of bieng thierself.
Truths you find through your adversities will defend you As your powers and all your energies conspire to carry you to be yourself means u have found yourself and believe in it enuf to have found personal truths to defend yourself from a society that doesn't agree.
3rd is sayin.. let it go
4th.. past has been dark but one doesnt have to let thier future be as thier past.
defend not nessisaraly from others or a society, but to yourself as what you know is right even though society is tring to change you. Seems alot of this album is about bieng yourself
from The Top 10 Steps Toward Spiritual Growth. Diana Robinson, Ph.D., Personal & Spirituality Coach
Dump your baggage.
We must unload our baggage, our beloved belongings, our sources of victimhood, our hurts, our perpetrators, our righteous wrath. We must unhook ourselves and be prepared to leave them all behind.
The Wheel of Transformation: Karlfried Graf Durckheim's method of spiritual awakening Durckheim warns us that this practice must be done continuously with concentrated awareness or it will lead nowhere.
Stage 1-- all that is contrary to essential being must be relinquished.
step 1: the practice of critical watchfulness
step 2: the letting go of all that stands in the way of new becoming
Stage 2-- that which has been relinquished must be dissolved in transcendent Being which absorbs and recreates us.
step 3: union with transcendent Being.
6th chakra: 3rd Eye: psychic POWER, spirit ENERGIES, higher intuition, light.
These is more at play than any of us could possibly understand. No matter how bad off we may feel we are, there are powers at work that none of us can grasp.
no, there are powers within yourself that you CAN grasp. :)
to Sciboy...
I agree with some of what you are saying, I don't think the song is saying to 'forget' your past, but to not let it control you. It is true, everything we have been through individually in our lives makes us who we are, but holding on to the past and letting it control us keeps us from moving forward.That goes for humans individually and as a whole/race.