How “Faster Car” Went From a Royalty-Free Track to the Anthem of a Generation — Thanks to a Minecraft YouTuber
“Faster Car” was not supposed to become a cultural touchstone. It was a royalty-free track on a stock music platform, written by three Swedish musicians who had no way of knowing that a Minecraft storyteller in Washington would turn it into something millions of people would carry into adulthood.
The Song That Almost No One Would Have Heard
When Loving Caliber — Michael Stenmark, Anders Lystell, and Linda Stenmark — released “Faster Car” in 2016, it entered the world through Epidemic Sound, a platform that licenses music to content creators. Not radio. Not Spotify playlists. Not a record label. A library of tracks that YouTubers use as background music.
That was the intended ceiling. Background music for someone else’s video. The kind of song you hear but do not notice.
Then in June 2017, Jessica Bravura — known online as Aphmau, a Minecraft roleplay YouTuber from Washington — used it as the centerpiece of a music video for her animated series MyStreet. The video now has 48 million views. The song now has over 100 million streams. And “Faster Car” became the first song to demonstrate what creator communities could do to an artist’s career — changing the economics of the entire music licensing industry in the process.
“Faster Car” was the lightbulb moment that caused Epidemic Sound to start distributing its artists’ tracks on streaming platforms and introduce a 50/50 royalty split with creators — a split that still exceeds industry standards today. One song. One YouTuber. One summer. An entire industry changed.
What the Song Is Actually About — and Why It Fit So Perfectly
“Faster Car” opens with a count-in — “one, two, one, two, three” — that feels less like a musical intro and more like someone summoning the courage to say something. Then: “I’ve been feeling so small.”
That line does something unusual for a pop song built around forward motion and acceleration. It starts from the ground. From smallness. From the feeling of being trapped inside a version of yourself that does not match who you want to be.
The “faster car” is never literally about driving. It is about the need to move — to get somewhere different, to leave behind whatever is making you feel small. The song does not tell you what you are running from. That gap is intentional. Every listener fills it with their own story.
“I’ve been feeling so small / watching the world spin ’round”
“I need a faster car / to get me out of here”
“The song does not tell you what you are running from. That gap is intentional. Every listener fills it with their own story.”
The Aphmau Effect — How a Minecraft Series Changed Everything
To understand why “Faster Car” hit so hard in 2017, you need to understand what MyStreet was. Aphmau’s series was a Minecraft roleplay show — animated characters, voiced acting, ongoing storylines — aimed at teenagers and pre-teens. It was not unlike a serialized drama, except it lived entirely on YouTube and its audience measured their fandom in rewatches, fanart, and comment threads.
When Aphmau released a music video featuring “Faster Car” for the show’s storyline, she was not just using a song. She was attaching it to a narrative her audience had emotional investment in. The song became inseparable from characters they cared about, moments they had followed for months, relationships they had watched develop.
Jessica Bravura later recalled: “I still remember fans absolutely loving Faster Car. It was an insanely chill yet fun song that made my series come to life in Summer 2016. Loving Caliber has brought my community together through wonderfully contagious melodies that define that era of many of my fans’ lives.”
Seven years later, fans are still returning to rewatch that video. The comments are not nostalgia for a song — they are nostalgia for a specific summer, a specific age, a specific version of themselves that watched Minecraft characters live out stories they cared about. “Faster Car” is the sound of that memory.
The Sound — Why the Production Matches the Feeling Exactly
“Faster Car” is in E major at 120 BPM — a tempo that feels energetic without being aggressive, moving without being frantic. It is the tempo of determination rather than urgency. You are going somewhere, but you are not panicking about getting there.
The production is built on electronic elements — synthesized bass, programmed drums, layered pads — but the arrangement is deliberately warm rather than cold. The verses are spare and intimate; the choruses expand. That dynamic arc from small to large mirrors the lyrical journey from feeling trapped to breaking free.
The vi–IV–I–V chord progression in the verses creates a gentle instability — you are always resolving toward something, never fully arriving until the chorus. When the chorus hits the tonic chord squarely, the emotional release is physical. That is not accidental. That is craft.
Linda Stenmark’s vocal sits in a range that is accessible without being generic — warm enough to feel personal, clear enough to feel like a message directed at you specifically. The decision to keep the production spacious rather than dense was the right one: a more cluttered sound would have buried the vulnerability the lyrics require.
Why “Faster Car” Still Hits in 2025
The song came out in 2016. Most songs from 2016 do not generate tens of thousands of TikTok posts in 2024. “Faster Car” does — and the comments on those posts are almost uniformly about memory, about childhood, about a specific feeling of watching something that mattered during a formative period.
That is a different kind of longevity than chart success. It is the longevity of a song that got attached to something real in people’s lives — not through radio repetition, but through a parasocial community built around a shared story. Aphmau’s audience grew up with MyStreet. They grew up with this song. It is embedded in who they were at a particular age, and that embedding does not fade.
“Faster Car” is one of the earliest examples of what is now a well-understood phenomenon: a creator community adopting a song so completely that the song becomes part of the community’s identity. This happens now with every major fandom. Loving Caliber and Aphmau were the proof of concept.
People Also Ask
What Is “Faster Car” by Loving Caliber About?
“Faster Car” is about the desire to escape a version of your life that feels too small — to find the means, the momentum, and the courage to become something different. The “faster car” is a metaphor for agency and forward movement, not literal driving. The song opens with vulnerability (“I’ve been feeling so small”) and builds toward determination, making the emotional journey from trapped to empowered the core of the composition.
What Is the Connection Between “Faster Car” and Aphmau?
In June 2017, Aphmau — Jessica Bravura, a Minecraft roleplay YouTuber — used “Faster Car” as the centerpiece of a music video for her animated series MyStreet. The video accumulated 48 million views and sparked a viral wave that pushed the song past 100 million streams. The partnership was so significant that it prompted Epidemic Sound, the licensing platform behind the song, to begin distributing all its artists’ tracks on streaming platforms and introduce a 50/50 royalty split with creators.
Who Made “Faster Car”?
Loving Caliber is a Swedish electronic pop trio composed of Michael Stenmark, Anders Lystell, and Linda Stenmark. “Faster Car” was the first song they wrote together as a group — making its eventual impact particularly meaningful. The track was released through Epidemic Sound in 2016, originally as a royalty-free license for content creators.
Why Do People Feel Nostalgic About “Faster Car”?
For a generation of Aphmau fans, “Faster Car” is inseparable from their experience watching MyStreet as teenagers. The song was attached not just to a video, but to characters and storylines they had emotional investment in. Memory does not work by storing songs in isolation — it stores them alongside the experiences they soundtracked. For this audience, the song is a direct portal to a specific summer, a specific age, and a specific version of themselves.
What Changed in the Music Industry Because of “Faster Car”?
The viral success of Aphmau’s “Faster Car” video was the direct catalyst for Epidemic Sound beginning to distribute its artists’ music on streaming platforms and implementing a 50/50 revenue split with artists. The CEO of Epidemic Sound described it as “that lightbulb moment where we really saw the power of online creator communities.” It established the template for how creator communities can launch songs that traditional radio and label promotion never would have reached.
Key Takeaways
“Faster Car” was a royalty-free background music track before Aphmau’s 2017 video turned it into a cultural phenomenon — demonstrating how creator communities can launch songs that traditional music industry channels never would have reached.
The song’s viral moment directly caused Epidemic Sound to begin distributing artists’ tracks on streaming platforms and introduce a 50/50 royalty split — a structural change that still affects the music licensing industry today.
The “faster car” is a metaphor for agency — not literal driving. The song opens from a place of smallness and builds toward determination, making the emotional arc the entire point.
Its nostalgia power comes from being attached to a specific community experience — Aphmau’s MyStreet — rather than radio repetition. For fans who grew up with the show, the song is a memory trigger, not just a track.
“Faster Car” was the first song Loving Caliber wrote together — making its eventual cultural impact a remarkable full-circle story for the trio.
The partnership between Loving Caliber and Aphmau continues — culminating in a 2024 collaboration for the final season of MyStreet, seven years after a single video changed both of their trajectories.
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