"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.
Fair Rosanna your vagrancy's a familiar tale.
Fraught with danger, the lives you led were judged profane.
Hatred enfolds us, inculcates our minds with it's heresy.
Laymen enfold us, clemency arise to set you free.
Fate, although Xavier has prayed that life giving waters may rain
Down on the souls of men to cure them of their ways.
These were the sins of Xavier's past, hung like jewels in the forest of veils.
Deep in the heart where the mysteries emerge
Eve bears the stigma of original sin.
Freedom's so hard, when we are all bound by laws
Etched in the scheme of natures own hand, unseen by all those who fail
In their pursuit of fate.
Although Xavier has prayed that life giving waters may rain
Down on the souls of men to cure them of their ways.
And as the night turns into day will the sun illuminate your way,
Or will your nightmares come home to stay.
Xavier's love lies in chains.
These were the sins of Xavier's past,
Hung like jewels in the forest of veils.
Fraught with danger, the lives you led were judged profane.
Hatred enfolds us, inculcates our minds with it's heresy.
Laymen enfold us, clemency arise to set you free.
Fate, although Xavier has prayed that life giving waters may rain
Down on the souls of men to cure them of their ways.
These were the sins of Xavier's past, hung like jewels in the forest of veils.
Deep in the heart where the mysteries emerge
Eve bears the stigma of original sin.
Freedom's so hard, when we are all bound by laws
Etched in the scheme of natures own hand, unseen by all those who fail
In their pursuit of fate.
Although Xavier has prayed that life giving waters may rain
Down on the souls of men to cure them of their ways.
And as the night turns into day will the sun illuminate your way,
Or will your nightmares come home to stay.
Xavier's love lies in chains.
These were the sins of Xavier's past,
Hung like jewels in the forest of veils.
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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"
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
When We Were Young
Blink-182
Blink-182
This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
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.
The fourth track from Dead Can Dance’s third album, Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, details the trials of one Roseanna Xavier, a fictional woman who is unjustly persecuted for unspecified (but subtly implied) reasons. Xavier makes for a tragic feminist heroine subjugated by the confines of a society dominated by men.
The narrator makes an appeal for humanity to look on the judgements of Xavier with a critical eye, and for empathy to rule over the fear of the unknown and of that which differs from convention.
The exact nature of the persecution that Xavier suffers is undisclosed but centers around the fact that she is a woman. She is judged a vagrant and profane, suggesting perhaps that she suffers due to an open expression of sexuality or of a strong identity that diverges from the expectations of a patriarchal society that favours submissive and conforming women.
St. Francis Xavier was the the greatest Roman Catholic missionary of modern times. I am thinking there was some inspiration for why he chose that as the songs name. With encouragement from his friend Ignatius of Loyola, Xavier devoted himself to religious service and became one of the founders of the Jesuit order. so I do agree with unfashioned's comment especially since it's from Brendan Perry himself but I have always believed there was some genuine religious undertones in this songs lyrics and title that cannot be ignored.