He certainly did earn that reputation.
Oh, and I guess they'll say I've grown
I know more than I wanted to know
I've said more than I wanted to say
I'm headed home
Yea but I'm not so sure
That home is a place
You can still get to by train
So I'm looking out the window
And I'm drifting off to sleep
With my face pressed up against the pane
With the rhythm of my heart
And the ringing in my ears
It's the rhythm of the southbound train
Oh, well the wind starts to look like her hair
And the clouds in her bright blue eyes
As the sea and the shore fall and rise
Like her breast as she breathes by my side
And the moon is her lips as the sun
Is headed on down to the sea
Like her head as she lays down on me
Until we reach ocean side
Over and over I hear the same refrain
It's the rhythm of my heart
And my sleepy girl's breathing
It's the rhythm of my southbound train
Oh, I suppose they'll say I should've known
Or maybe I'm just feeling old
Like a lawyer with no one to blame
I'm headed home
Yeah but I'm not so sure
Home is a place that'll ever be the same
So we gather up our things
And we head out in the cold
And your eyes are where you carry the pain
When I hear the whistle weeping
It's crying to the skying
It's the rhythm of your southbound train
It's the rhythm of this southbound train
I know more than I wanted to know
I've said more than I wanted to say
I'm headed home
Yea but I'm not so sure
That home is a place
You can still get to by train
So I'm looking out the window
And I'm drifting off to sleep
With my face pressed up against the pane
With the rhythm of my heart
And the ringing in my ears
It's the rhythm of the southbound train
Oh, well the wind starts to look like her hair
And the clouds in her bright blue eyes
As the sea and the shore fall and rise
Like her breast as she breathes by my side
And the moon is her lips as the sun
Is headed on down to the sea
Like her head as she lays down on me
Until we reach ocean side
Over and over I hear the same refrain
It's the rhythm of my heart
And my sleepy girl's breathing
It's the rhythm of my southbound train
Oh, I suppose they'll say I should've known
Or maybe I'm just feeling old
Like a lawyer with no one to blame
I'm headed home
Yeah but I'm not so sure
Home is a place that'll ever be the same
So we gather up our things
And we head out in the cold
And your eyes are where you carry the pain
When I hear the whistle weeping
It's crying to the skying
It's the rhythm of your southbound train
It's the rhythm of this southbound train
Lyrics submitted by Loona3, edited by pavelkomarov
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This song is def a twin to "Unfair" (a song she has been quoted as saying is about falling in love with someone who is already in a relationship) so it is presumably about the same person. Given the references to buying an apartment and not being able to see her love interest "after tonight," it's most likely that she's moving away and she'll "wait a day to break the bad news" (i.e. notifying him that she's leaving once she's already gone).
And, of course, the fact that she sees in him a fellow "idealist" and "dreamer" (terms commonly given to people with the INFP personality on the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)) portends that she'll always be left wondering if they would've been perfect together.
Fast Car
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"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.
The Night We Met
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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"
I just realized that since most of Switchfoot's and Jon Foreman's songs don't deal with love or relationships or romance or whatever, it's that much more beautiful when they do...you know what I mean?