"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.
Now its years since your body went flat and even memories of that
Are all think and dull, all gravel and glass. But who needs them
Now -- displaced they're easily more safe -- the worst of it now: I
Can't remember your face.
Return.
For a while, with the vertigo cured, we were alive -- we were pure.
The void took the shape of all that you were, but years take their
Toll, and things get bent into shape... Antiseptic and tired, I can't
Remember your face.
Return.
You were supposed to grow old. Reckless, unfrightened, and old,
You were supposed to grow old.
Return. You were supposed to return.
Are all think and dull, all gravel and glass. But who needs them
Now -- displaced they're easily more safe -- the worst of it now: I
Can't remember your face.
Return.
For a while, with the vertigo cured, we were alive -- we were pure.
The void took the shape of all that you were, but years take their
Toll, and things get bent into shape... Antiseptic and tired, I can't
Remember your face.
Return.
You were supposed to grow old. Reckless, unfrightened, and old,
You were supposed to grow old.
Return. You were supposed to return.
Lyrics submitted by qshapadooy
Return Lyrics as written by Timothy Nordwind Damian Kulash
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Fast Car
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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"
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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"
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Page
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I just heard a song that reminded me of my sister Timory, so I googled her. She was indeed a good friend of Damien's and fell out of a window at a party on (not for) her birthday. I'd like to set something striaght. She did not commit suicide. We were very close and I can say with assurance that she was a very positive person and a fighter. I saw the window she fell from and talked to numerous eye witnesses, and heard from the poor fellow she pulled out with her as she tried to maintain her balance. She was also a very accomplished musician and singer. I suspect you'd know her name as well had she not died before her time.
Oh, and I agree that the song is beautiful. Ted Leo also wrote a song about her called "Timmorous me." You may not take my word for it, but if two people like that write a song about a girl, you know she must of been something special. (coincedentally I knew Ted in college and he met my sister through his brother completely independantly of me - in fact he didn't know she and I were related until after she died).
"Yeah, this song is about Timory Hyde, a good friend of the singer, Damian, and mine. She fell out of a third-story window on her birthday. She was at a party, leaning against a window, and a friend came up to her and gave her a big hug. The window gave out and they fell 3 stories to the driveway. The friend lived, she did not. That song tears me to pieces, esp. when Damian sings 'You were supposed to grow old.'"
the line i love so damn much in this song is "and the worst of it now: I can't remember your face".. the way damian kulash sings this... just so overwhelming!
I feel like if me and my boyfriend broke up, and a few years later i'd be thinking them things about him. about how you were supposed to grow old, and return, and how ya can't remeber his face.
this song is about damian's friend, timmery, who committed suicide. also, the tattoo of a star on his arm has a "T" inside it for her. this is my favorite OKgo song.
this song is amazing. "you were supposed to grow old" is just one of those lines that leave you speachless.
statbucksbabe28, thanks for the info on the song, i always suspected that it was about somebody who had died, but i never knew who.
Didn't know this song had anything to do with suicide.. but it's still my fav song on that cd
when correy told me it was about suicide it all made sense. it's sad to begin with (the song that is) but that makes it twice as sad. the "i can't remember your face" and "you were supposed to grow old/return" so poigant and it just plucks at your heart strings!
I knew it was about someones death/ or suicide but thanks for telling us the real deal Statbucksbabe28. yeah my fave part is..."the worst of it now: I can't remember your face." and "You were supposed to grow old" i agree this song hits and u and ur just like "wow" i get chills when i hear "u were supposed to grow old" plus this band is amazing very talented and original
Yeah, I knew this song was about Damian's friend who committed suicide. She was only 21 I believe. Hence the "you were supposed to grow old" line. I love that line so much. It makes me feel a lot.