Desperation, love, cars, and song
[NOTE: I wrote about the “Fast Car” brouhaha involving the Luke Combs cover version two days ago. That sparked further thoughts – thus, this post.]
The strength of the song “Fast Car” is due in no small part to its lyrics’ powerful evocation of hope, desperation, and despair. Sometimes things just don’t work out, even for those who are doing their best to do what’s right. Sometimes the deck really does seem stacked against them – and that’s true whether the song is sung by a black woman back in 1988 or a country-type white guy in 2023.
Some of the lyrics:
You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we’ll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove
You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won’t have to drive too far
Just ‘cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living
By the song’s end, the singer seems trapped, although of course we don’t know the ultimate trajectory of her life. There’s also this lyric:
So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast it felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder…
In America in particular, the car isn’t just a form of transportation. It’s often seen as a way to express oneself, especially for the young, and a means of escape to freedom. Speed is part of this, as is lovemaking – or at least it was back then. The very first kisses, the very first touches, and the very first sex often happened to teenagers in a car.
My second boyfriend, whom I met when I was seventeen, came from a place that was more like the world about which country singer Luke Combs might be singing – rural, depressed, mostly white. It was a world in which the young men all had guns and hunted with them, and they had fast cars or fast motorcycles. At nineteen years of age, my boyfriend had a lot of friends who were already lying in quiet graves, the victims mostly of those fast cars plus alcohol. And the survivors like my boyfriend were already living lives of not-so-quiet desperation.
I had met this boyfriend freshman year at college, and as you might imagine we were a bit of an odd couple. He had somewhat of a Steve McQueen vibe, was smart but troubled, and had earned a scholarship to the far-off college where we’d met. But he didn’t last long there – it was a foreign world to him – and he dropped out just a few months after starting.
He went back to that small town where he’d grown up, and as far as I know he never left. I visited him there briefly a few months after his return home; he’d bought a motorcycle, and we went riding on it. Fast, with my arms wrapped around his waist.
That boyfriend died a long time ago. I know because now and then I’d Google his name, and the only mark he seemed to have made was when he died, because the first sign I ever found of him in all those years was his obituary. It was two sentences long. There didn’t seem to be a family; no wife and children. There was no mention of accomplishments. I don’t know what happened and will never know. But I don’t think it was a happy story.
“Fast Car” makes me think of him.
It also makes me think of another set of lyrics from another great song: Dire Straits’ “Telegraph Road.” It’s a lengthy song that tells some of the story of America’s history. It’s set in Detroit and came out in 1982, a few years before “Fast Car.” Here are the lyrics I’m talking about:
Well, I’d sooner forget, but I remember those nights
Yeah, life was just a bet on a race between the lights
You had your head on my shoulder, you had your hand in my hair
Now you act a little colder like you don’t seem to care
But just believe in me, baby, and I’ll take you away
From out of this darkness and into the day
From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain
From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
‘Cause I’ve run every red light on memory lane
I’ve seen desperation explode into flames
And I don’t want to see it again
From all of these signs saying, “Sorry, but we’re closed”
All the way
Down the Telegraph Road
And to put these words I’ve been writing about to the music that goes with them, here’s Tracy Chapman herself singing the original “Fast Car.” She’s got such an evocative voice with that fast vibrato and resonant timbre:
This is Luke Combs’ version, very faithful to the original:
And here’s Mark Knopfler the great, singing about roads, cars, love, and despair in Detroit along Telegraph Road – or anywhere (the part I discussed starts around 7:42, but the whole song is wonderful):
These days in order to be PC the fast car would have to be electric. And it seems that car ownership is lower in the younger generations than previous generations. Overall, American car culture appears not to be what it was a few decades ago.
Amazing story about the boyfriend and I especially like the motorcycle part.
I’ve been hearing a lot of live music lately, mostly covers, and recently covers of Bonnie Raitt songs. I was intrigued by the song “Angel From Montgomery.” Written by John Prine, it is written from a woman’s first person perspective. Prine and Raitt have performed it together. And it is dark, in a somewhat similar way to the above songs.
I have a hard time listening to Luke Combs’ cover of Fast Car. The emotion of the song seems to me to be “owned” by the struggling black female experience…ie Chapman. But I’ve always loved the song and was a Chapman fan from her first drop.
And I could listen to Mark Knopfler sing the phone book. Probably the way you like the Bee Gees…who put my teeth on edge.
I was always sad I didn’t get to Cambridge in time to see her busking in the T — by the time I got there Fast Car was already charting.
Please decipher “busking on the T”. Is it Cambridge-specific?
Fast Cars: alcohol, hard times, flight from responsibility, and bad choices. Men that let the women down. It’s been decades since I’d listened to Tracy Chapman.
And then there is Telegraph Road, and Dire Straits/Mark Knopfler. So much richer.
Thanks neo. The associated YouTube classical composer analysis of Telegraph Road is pretty interesting as well.
Love the reference to Telegraph Road. I was thinking of those lyrics before you mentioned them. Neo, we are kindred spirits.
Cicero: The “T”, short for MBTA, is the Boston area subway/rail/bus system.
I was in and out of the Boston area in the early-mid 80’s and sometimes used the T. I wonder if I saw her, or perhaps performing on the street in Harvard Square.
John Guilfoyle: The strength of the song is that the sentiment is universal, the lyrics don’t refer to her blackness or gayness at all. Anyone struggling can relate.
I got Tracy Chapman’s first album as a graduation present in 1988. On a cassette tape. I listened to it constantly in my car for a long time. It’s what I call a ‘top to bottom’ album, where all the songs are at least good and you can listen without hitting fast forward. Now, when I can listen to it whenever I want, it took this controversy for me to hear it for the first time in years.
Two other great songs about driving (and women):
Eye of the Hurricane, by David Wilcox
455 Rocket, by Kathy Mattea.
Mitchell Strand: Did you like the idea of poor people rising up and taking what’s theirs?
Here’s a driving song for y’all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbTnJtnn_w
You told a beautiful story and I can relate. I was an up and comer kinda kid in my town, Hammond Indiana, and I saw my friends either decay, like the love interest in Fast Car, or just get the hell out of dodge before it fell down.
I think fast car is also about isolation. She was the only one making efforts, while everyone around her just fell down, without getting back up, but she remembers that car, and that’s all.
It’s a tragic tale, and a beautiful song.
Taking what’s “theirs” is a novel concept, except to a leftist. Private property isn’t one of their concepts, until they get into power, then the song changes, for those in power anyway. She didn’t sing that
Now the tune in blue shities goes something like “theft is reparations.” Is “F around and find out a song?”
The Korean American store owners sang a different song in the Rodney King riots. Kyle Rittenhouse was singing a different song too, in the 2020 BLM insurrection. So “F Around and Find Out” is a song it seems.
The BLM grifters must have risen up and “taken back what was theirs,” trained Marxists that they are. Patrice Colours etc.
Knopfler: singular guitar player and awesome songwriter.
Always loved Chapman’s music. Bought her first album almost the week it came out.
If you like her topics, you may also like Beth Orton. Whereas Chapman is sort of country/coffeeshop, Orton’s is sort of acid/trailerpark. Unusual but ‘delving’.
Whatever that meant.
Neo, your story of your second boy friend reminded me of Larry Bird, who went to Indiana University on a scholarship and dropped out after a month. The cultural shift was just too much for him to handle. I also knew a chemist who got accepted into the MIT graduate program, and left after a year. He couldn’t handle Boston, it was too far from his cowboy boots and hat roots.
And come to think of it, I am also reminded of my father, who made it out of poverty with the help of the GI Bill (he attended Caltech), but never quite fit into the higher culture he aspired to.
I read that song, even in its first incarnation when I first fell in love with it, as an indictment of the ways in which we all lie to ourselves.
The narrator can see perfectly well that the man (presumably, though not explicitly) to whom she’s linked herself does not share her goals and ambitions. But she stays with him because she thinks he’ll get there eventually. It’s a terrible indictment of – as I said – the lies we tell ourselves. My first husband would literally never have supported anything I wanted to do – it would have challenged his world view far too much. I think that women especially are prone to self-delusion – that they can change the fundamentals of their relationships – because we ourselves are so strongly focused on relationships and not on outcomes.
Just one of the ways in which men and women are not the same creature.
A car song that has been covered by multiple singers of various musical genres is “Silver Thunderbird” Written and first performed by Mark Cohn and then covered successfully by Jo Dee Messina. The song has a different message than “Fast Car” but it tells a poignant story of a child remembering his/her father.
Cohn explained:
In a 1992 interview with Q magazine, Cohn compared his father to the Willie Loman character in Death Of A Salesman, saying: “A guy out there working a seven-day week and not able to support his family. He’s ‘the man with the plan and the pocket comb’ in the song. Only the plan never panned out. But he did have a silver Thunderbird. Yeah, that was his car. ‘You can keep your Eldorados/And the foreign car’s absurd.’ So the story is about a man who’s at the highest comfort level he ever experiences while he’s driving.”
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/marc-cohn/silver-thunderbird
The song begins:
“Watched it comin’ up Winslow,
down south park boulevard
Yeah it was looking good from tail to hood
Great big fins and painted steel
Man it looked just like the batmobile
With my old man behind the wheel
Well you could hardly even see him
In all of that chrome
The man with the plan and
the pocket comb
But every night it carried him home
And I could hear him sayin’
Don’t you gimme no buick
Son you must take my word
If there’s a God in Heaven
He’s got a silver thunderbird
You can keep your El Dorados
And the foreign car’s absurd
Me I wanna go down
In a silver thunderbird
He got up every mornin’
while I was still asleep
But I remember the sound
of him shufflin’ around
Right before the crack of dawn
When I heard him turn the motor on
But when I got up they were gone”
Cohn also wrote “Walking in Memphis ” which has also been covered multiple times, including by Cher and by country group Lonestar.
Marisa: it was 1988, and back then we didn’t parse every lyric of every song for its political acceptibility. I just enjoyed Tracy Chapman’s voice and her guitar and I probably thought the poor people rising up and taking what was theirs was a metaphor or a call to a lot of people to work within the system, not some call to Bolshevism.
Because 35 years ago there was still such a thing as ambiguity. And a white kid from the suburbs could listen to a black woman with dreads singing about revolution and understand her life maybe had been a little harder than mine had and she chose to sing about it in a way that people different from her could hear, without poking her finger in their eyes.
But it’s not 1988 anymore and everything is different and there’s no nuance, or ambiguity, or gray. Just black and white and purity tests on both sides. So feel how you want to feel about me enjoying a good song 35 years ago when I was 18.
The revolutionaries always need a soft version of their plan for the young and naive; a hook, a pleasant voice. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain or where their plan leads.
The boy can play.
I don’t think Combs was trying to appropriate or own Chapman’s song. Maybe he liked it, played it a few times, and somebody told him it should be a single, and it just happened to take off. It’s another cover that won’t leave much of an impression but that brings people back to the original, but it gives journalists an opportunity to create an artificial controversy. Talk about who has a “right” to sing a song is a touchy question. If you grew up in a wealthy suburb, people will say you don’t have the right to sing the blues, but the line is blurrier when poorer people of different races is concerned.
It’s not uncommon for smart kids get pointed towards colleges where they don’t quite fit in. Some can’t adapt and go back home. A transitional period — a summer session or gap year — might or might not have helped them to fit in. Others overadapt. They go native and assume what they believe to be the customs and manner of their new environment, often overdoing it.
“Busking” seems to be another word we took from the British. It’s possible it circulated in a subculture of subway performers for years before surfacing, but my impression is that you didn’t hear it in the US until recently.
When Neo writes about songs and/or songwriters, with or without “click” windows, it is never songs that I have heard or will ever hear. I listen to bluegrass, born of Bill Monroe in the 1950s and contemporarily going strong, where one can understand the lyrics and admire the amazing instrumentalism. Or I listen to classical; it is classical, timeless, for a reason!
I will never use the”busking” word. Never! Or ride a subway ever again.
Cicero:
And you also have said I don’t write about or link to classical music, and yet I’ve done it many times. I even once commented to you and compiled a long list of posts of mine featuring classical music. You didn’t reply, and after that, in other posts, you again said I never link to classical music.
Guess I missed that post, Neo. But of course ballet is danced to classical!
But my comment was really related to “Fast Car” in all its iterations.
Plus, I was boosting Bluegrass music in my comment. I found WWVA Clear Channel Wheeling W. Va in the 1960s, when AM bounced off the clouds so you could catch it hundreds of miles away, there was no FM, and I heard Grand Ol Opry for the first time and fell in instant love with that early Bluegrass. 15 yrs later I moved to small town western NC, where they asked (always) 2 questions: Where are you from, and what church do you attend? I was asked that by a local Bluegrass trio, plus, did I have a play request? And blew them away when I answered, “Cripple Creek” instead of “Duh,your choice”!
I don’t think Combs was trying to appropriate or own Chapman’s song. Maybe he liked it, played it a few times, and somebody told him it should be a single, and it just happened to take off.
Abraxas:
A week ago I hadn’t heard of Luke Combs, but when he says “Fast Car” is “one of this favorite songs,” I see no reason to disbelieve him. His passion is clear.
He even sings in Chapman’s gender and refers to himself as a “check-out girl.” I note that his country audience doesn’t take exception to his gender-switch.
It is a deeply respectful cover.
My theory is that in the past 25 years country Americans have taken a terrible hit economically and emotionally. Offshoring industry and drugs have devastated much of their world. “Fast Car” speaks to that desperation.
Re: Marc Cohn, “Silver Thunderbird”
Invisible Sun:
What a great song!
My grandfather was much more successful than Willy Loman, but he was still that guy in the song — “the man with a plan and a pocket comb.” After he retired, he traded into a new Lincoln or Thunderbird every two years. His one personal extravagance.
I so regret that he died before I was old enough to have an adult conversation with him.
–Marc Cohn, “Silver Thunderbird (Official Music Video)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88Ko1xIkuHI
I’ve been thinking about the lyrics to “Fast Car” since the recent spate of articles on the new cover. What I hear is a story about a young woman whose mother ditched her and her father because he was a drunk. The daughter hangs around and takes care of the drunk, dropping out of school. Then when she hits the right age, with no job skills, she takes up with a guy whose three characteristics are his fast car, his lack of job skills, and his future as a drunk. She reproduces with him. Things go badly, and the popular culture explanation is “it’s the economy” or “it’s social injustice.”
The song had a good riff, though, and some nice diminished chords.
huxley, that’s an interesting observation. It’s strange because that damage of which you speak is so often invisible, or hidden. I reflect on how little I know of it, for example. I’ve done all right for myself in that time after what I regard as a somewhat shaky start in adulthood, but sometimes I think about how it has gone for a lot of others that I don’t see.
Things go badly, and the popular culture explanation is “it’s the economy” or “it’s social injustice.”
Wendy Laubach:
As I hear the song, the narrator is trying more than explaining.
But it really is hard when you’re starting from zero, no money, no skills, no good parental examples.
Currently that’s half my niece’s story. She lives in welfare housing. Her mother is barely keeping her sobriety and hanging in. Her father is a blue-collar guy turned drug addict and dying slowly of hep-C. The rest of her family are alcoholics and drug addicts.
She’s taking care of her father and trying to put together a better life, I’m doing what I can to give her a hand up and an idea of greater possibilities.
That’s a hard hand to play when you’re young.
huxley:
You write:
I believe you are quite correct. But I want to add that the area where this boyfriend lived – the one I describe in the post – had already reached very high levels of devastation, economically and emotionally, long before 25 years ago. In fact, without getting too specific, I’ll just say it was over 50 years ago.
To me, the situation of the woman in the song is heartbreaking. She did some noble things, picking up where the adults in her life had failed her, and then falling in love with hope and dreams. And then she got crushed. Whether she’ll emerge okay is unknown – the song doesn’t say – but I think she’s a very sympathetic figure.
Wendy:
Correct read on the song lyrics. It’s really harder when you don’t learn from other’s mistakes and then make the same ones.
George Soros and decriminalization and legalization of drugs. What could go agley? Some just want to see it burn. Cue “the poor gonna rise up and take what’s theirs.”
Re: 25 years
neo:
To be sure, country America was going downhill earlier. I was thinking of the additional horrors of speed and opioids, which came later. For instance:
–“‘Methland’ links drugs, economy in rural towns”
https://www.today.com/popculture/methland-links-drugs-economy-rural-towns-wbna32460122
Luke Combs’s feeling for “Fast Car” goes beyond liking and respecting it:
—
“[It’s] my first favorite song probably ever. I remember listening to that song with my dad in his truck when I was probably four years old,” Combs, 33, recalls his family connection to the song in a press release. “He had a cassette, a tape of it, and we had this old brown camper top F-150.”
“We rode around that thing, and he had a tape cassette player in there, and I have the original cassette — my dad brought it to me a couple of years ago… I have the one, and I have it in my shop,” he continued.
https://musicmayhemmagazine.com/luke-combs-reveals-why-he-chose-to-cover-fast-car-its-been-such-a-big-part-of-my-life/
—-
Personally I’m not especially keen on the song. It’s a good one, just not especially my cup of tea musically. But this controversy is demented.
That’s a poignant story about second boyfriend, Neo. I had a motorbike (not a true motorcycle) when I was in high school and remember very well the thrill of having a girl riding behind me.
About the boyfriend’s death: I didn’t stay in touch with people from my high school after graduation. A few years ago I joined a Facebook group for people who graduated from that school around the same time I did, and learned that a girl I once dated, not very seriously, had died many years ago. The intimation was that she had really hit the skids in some way after high school. “Life hit her early and hard,” somebody said. I was oddly shocked, and saddened, which was…well, odd, because I hadn’t even known her very well.
I was oddly shocked, and saddened, which was…well, odd,
An old, serious, girl friend died in 2018, much too young. I was surprised at how hard it hit me when I learned that. And I hadn’t seen her in about 35 years.
Cover? More like copy. If you are going to record an old song PLEASE bring something new and original to it.
“Mostly white”, Neo wrote about the community of her old boyfriend. OMG !
neo to huxley:
I am reminded of Appalachia, of coal country. Which reminds me of a recent ChicagoBoyz post. Coal Mining Songs
beegees drum cover:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bbxVyOGxnvU