Fast Car (Song)

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    Covering the Rise of Tracy Chapman

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    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicTracy Chapman’s ascent to the pop stratosphere in 1988 was not in any way guaranteed. She was making folk music in a time of stadium rock and hip-hop. She was orienting her songs around social concerns. And yet, after a few fortuitous turns in the summer of that year, Chapman’s “Fast Car” became a global anthem. And its success landed her on the cover of Rolling Stone.For a young Black woman on her first album, it was a startling achievement. The magazine was relatively cloistered in its coverage, but Chapman proved a force to reckon with. The story, written by Steve Pond, is a crucial document — but it is also prophetic, capturing how Chapman was skeptical of the spotlight, and even of the reasons people had embraced her so assiduously.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Chapman’s rapid rise to pop royalty, how her music figured into the broader musical conversation of the late 1980s, and the ways in which she’s changed little over the decades.Guest:Steve Pond, a longtime music journalist for Rolling Stone and The Los Angeles Times who is now the awards editor of The WrapConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Where Has Tracy Chapman Been? Her Grammys Triumph Has Fans Wondering

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      Her triumphant performance at the Grammy Awards left fans wondering what she has been doing since she left the music world, and whether she might return.Tracy Chapman’s rare public appearance at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night — where she practically stole the show performing her 1988 song “Fast Car” with the country singer Luke Combs — left many fans wondering why she had largely stepped away from music for more than a decade.Despite some scattered performances on television and at awards shows, Chapman, 59, has remained almost entirely absent from the music world in recent years, having released her last studio album in 2008 and done her last tour in 2009. Since she first emerged in the late 1980s, she has always been known as a reclusive and private figure.“Being in the public eye and under the glare of the spotlight was, and it still is, to some extent, uncomfortable for me,” she told The Irish Times in 2015. “There are some ways by which everything that has happened in my life has prepared me for this career. But I am bit shy.”The acclaim for her Grammys performance — Taylor Swift could be seen singing along in the crowd — was a sign of how beloved Chapman remains. Combs’s note-for-note cover of “Fast Car” went to No. 2 on Billboard’s pop singles chart last year, and after the Grammys, Chapman’s original began shooting up iTunes’s download chart.After her debut LP, “Tracy Chapman,” was released in 1988 — and went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart — she released seven more studio albums. Her last, “Our Bright Future,” came out in 2008. Jon Pareles of The New York Times described it as a collection of “morose love songs” as well as “her latest utopian vision of a world without war or greed.”Chapman performed at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2012. Kevin Wolf/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs Gave America a Rare Gift: Harmony

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      Culture can too often drive us apart. At the Grammys on Sunday, two artists delivered something different.When a beloved artist who has not performed live in some time returns to the stage, we often expect them to appear fragile, unsteady, ill at ease. But during Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, when the camera first pulled back from a tight shot of a woman’s fingers picking a familiar riff on an acoustic guitar and revealed the face of the great, elusive folk singer Tracy Chapman, what you noticed was the joy radiating from her face. Her contented smile. The unwavering tone and rich steadiness of her voice.It was a genuine moment of warmth and unity, the sort seldom offered these days by televised award shows — or televised anything, really. Singing her rousing 1988 hit “Fast Car” live for the first time in years, duetting with the country star Luke Combs — whose faithful cover of the song was one of last year’s defining hits — and taking in the rapturous applause of her musical peers, Chapman gave off the feeling, in the words of her timeless song, that she belonged.Thirty-five years ago, at the 1989 Grammy Awards, Chapman stood alone onstage and performed a wrenching rendition of “Fast Car” accompanied by only her own acoustic guitar.What made Sunday night’s performance feel different wasn’t just the time that had passed, or the gray hair that now elegantly frames Chapman’s face. It was the presence of Combs, born a year after that Grammy performance, regarding Chapman with an awe-struck reverence. He seemed to be a stand-in for the many, many people over the years — of all races, genders and generations — who have heard their deepest desires reflected in this song and wished to pay Chapman their gratitude.They traded a few lines and harmonized beautifully on the chorus — her tone opalescent, his bringing some grit — but Combs never overshadowed Chapman. He knew that in that moment, no one could. Something about the way he looked at her said it all: His eyes shone with irrepressible respect. Here was a grown man, an assured performer who sells out stadiums, visibly trembling before the sight and the sound of the folk singer Tracy Chapman.He was hardly alone in that: The few crowd shots during the performance revealed some of music’s major stars, including Brandi Carlile, on their feet, thrilled, before a standing ovation. More

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      Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ Named CMA Awards Song of the Year

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      She is the first Black songwriter to receive the honor from the Country Music Awards. Her 1988 hit reached a new generation of fans as a cover by Luke Combs.Tracy Chapman won song of the year at the Country Music Awards on Wednesday for “Fast Car,” a folk ballad that topped the country charts more than three decades after it was first released thanks to a cover by the singer Luke Combs.Chapman, 59, is the first Black songwriter to win that award, Rolling Stone Magazine reported. She did not attend the awards ceremony in Nashville but thanked the crowd in a statement that was read onstage by Sarah Evans, a co-presenter of the award.“It’s truly an honor for my song to be newly recognized after 35 years of its debut,” Chapman’s statement said. “Thank you to the C.M.A.s and a special thanks to Luke and all of the fans of ‘Fast Car.’”Combs, an unassuming star known for his irrepressibly catchy and relatable country anthems, also won single of the year for “Fast Car.” He began his acceptance speech on Wednesday by thanking Chapman for writing “one of the best songs of all time.”“I just recorded it because I love this song so much,” he said. “It’s meant so much to me throughout my entire life.”The original version of the song reached No. 6 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 1988. It won Chapman three Grammy Award nominations in 1989, including for song of the year. She won for best female pop vocalist.Combs’s cover climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in September, after 19 weeks in the No. 2 spot. It also reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 chart over the summer.As covers go, the vocals and acoustic guitar riffs on Combs’s version hew relatively closely to those on the original “Fast Car.” But other elements, including his North Carolina twang and a pedal steel guitar, give it more of a country feel.Combs was not the first artist to cover the song by a long shot, but the success of his version this year has been a catalyst for many young people to discover Ms. Chapman’s music.Nominations for the Grammy Awards, the premiere prize for popular music, will be announced on Friday, and industry watchers are waiting to see if Chapman will be among the nominees for “Fast Car” because of the cover. More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): A.I. Pop Stars and Luke Combs’s ‘Fast Car’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The recent wave of generative A.I. music, including songs “by” Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, Drake and the Weeknd, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Michael Jackson and othersLuke Combs’s cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” which is now No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, topping the original’s 1988 peak of No. 6Viewer questions about band reunions and pop star protestsNew songs from Doe Boy and Nia ArchivesSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More