"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.
Oh, the smell of the bakery from across the street
Got in my nose
As we carried our ladders down the street
With the wrought iron gate rows
I went home and listened to Jimmie Rodgers in my lunch break
Bought five Woodbines at the shop on the corner
And went straight back to work
Oh, Sam was up on top
And I was on the bottom with the V
We went for lemonade and Paris buns
At the shop and broke for tea
I collected from the lady
And I cleaned the fanlight inside out
I was blowing saxophone on the weekend
In that down joint
What's my line
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows (number a hundred and thirty six)
I heard Leadbelly and Blind Lemon
On the street where I was born
Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee
Muddy Waters singin' I'm a rolling stone
I went home and read my Christmas Humphreys' book on Zen
Curiosity killed the cat
Kerouac's Dharma Bums and On The Road
What's my line
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows
What's my line
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows
Got in my nose
As we carried our ladders down the street
With the wrought iron gate rows
I went home and listened to Jimmie Rodgers in my lunch break
Bought five Woodbines at the shop on the corner
And went straight back to work
Oh, Sam was up on top
And I was on the bottom with the V
We went for lemonade and Paris buns
At the shop and broke for tea
I collected from the lady
And I cleaned the fanlight inside out
I was blowing saxophone on the weekend
In that down joint
What's my line
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows (number a hundred and thirty six)
I heard Leadbelly and Blind Lemon
On the street where I was born
Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee
Muddy Waters singin' I'm a rolling stone
I went home and read my Christmas Humphreys' book on Zen
Curiosity killed the cat
Kerouac's Dharma Bums and On The Road
What's my line
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Baby don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows
What's my line
I'm happy cleaning windows
Take my time
I'll see you when my love grows
Don't let it slide
I'm a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows
Lyrics submitted by yuri_sucupira
Cleaning Windows Lyrics as written by Van Morrison
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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"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.
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“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.
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To me, Van is singing about how he's happy day to day, but he's meant for something more. He's reading books about hitting the road and traveling the country, while dreaming of being a musician.
The chorus is key: "What's my line? I'm happy cleaning windows"
"Baby, don't let it slide, I'm a working man in my prime, cleaning windows."
i luv this song.......it makes think of someone who has a carefree kinda life just cleaning windows(duh) and doin what he wants. I wish my life will be like.
Van spent his early days cleaning windows during the week and whaling on the sax on the weekends, very good way to go, this obvoiusly made him happy as the song is sang so joyful and full of energy, like all van songs the intensity is a 10 even when he is whispering.
Such a joyful song, i discovered it on my locals jukebox. Did he write this while he was still cleaning windows? As long as you're happy thats what matters. Brilliant song.
I like that Van says the smell of the bakery "got in his nose", rather than just saying he smelled something.
I agree that it's about his contentedness simply doing a menial job (cleaning windows) and enjoying music.
He actually says 'number thirty-six'. not 'a hundred and thirty six.
This sounds like a set of experiences that a lot of musicians, poets, and artists could appreciate: working a menial job, sure, but using that to buy the ability to indulge in art on the sly.
Notice that he devotes one line to "blowing saxophone on the weekend," but a whole verse to the influences that he describes himself as absorbing and taking to heart.
while i agree that a lot of the song is based in memories of working like the narrator, i think the key to this song are in the chorus and their being in the present tense: "what's my line/i'm happy cleaning windows" and "i'm a working man in my prime." to me this song is about what might have happened if he had never become "van morrison"--if he had remained somebody who cleaned windows, who "took his time," who "blew saxophone on the weekends." there are several lines suggesting caution, holding back--"curiosity killed the cat," "take my time." From this perspective the present-day van is more like the music the narrator listens to--in this way, the person who left home to follow their curiosity. At least, I think this accounts for the combination of happiness and wistfulness I hear in it.
Just have to say, I've heard this song so many times, but today, I just really heard the instrumental introduction. It's like I never heard it before, and it really gets to my soul!
I think the message of the song is actually that you DON'T have to feel pressure to follow your dreams or "achieve your potential". I think he's talking about how people expected him to grow into some amazing musician (because he had musical talent), but he unironically was perfectly happy cleaning windows and that there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has to "be great" if they can just be happy.
Also, I disagree with the lyrics on here and other sites. I think he says "in a Down joint" (as in a bar in County Down). Firstly, he is from that county. Secondly he references it in another song on the album ["Northern Muse (Solid Ground)"] and thirdly, I don't know what "that down joint" would mean, otherwise.