Tracy Chapman and the #BlackHistoryMonthChallenge
Day 11: Sometimes History Repeats Itself In A Good Way.
It is odd how moments of your personal history can come back to you on fiery wings, when you hear a certain piece of music.
It happened to me today. I was sitting in a cozy chair on a cold winter morning, staying out of the way while my girlfriend puttered around her small apartment. Still dressed in nothing but her underwear and a Janelle Monet t-shirt, she was dodging her playful cat in the hall and listing off all the things in her refrigerator that we could eat for lunch--speaking half to me and half to herself—and then just before she hopped into the shower, she took an old record out of its sleeve and put it on the turn table.
And as soon as the needle dropped and the first chords played, I was traveling in time. It was 1988, and Tracy Chapman was “Talking About a Revolution”.
I still know every song on Chapman’s debut album intimately, because I spent the best parts of 1988 with a girl who owned a copy of the CD. It was one of my favorite things to put on the stereo when I was at her place—which was quite often, since I often stole food for her from the cafeteria of the college I was attending, and I slept in her bed more often than my own during the brief but lovely time that we were dating.
My girlfriend and I aren’t the only queer women in their 50’s who have dusted off that album and listened to it again this week. Tracy Chapman is back in the news again, more than 13 years after she recorded her last studio album, performed her last tour, and retired from public life as a celebrity. Suddenly her performance of the song “Fast Car” is miraculously back from the grave; it hit Number 1 on iTunes this week, and her debut album Tracy Chapman has come along for the ride, also #1 on iTunes. Better still, her Greatest Hits album is currently Number 2 on the same chart, and her hit single “Give Me One Reason” is at Number 9, nearly 30 years after its first release in 1995.
All of this is happening because on February 4, 2024 she took the stage alongside country music star Luke Combs at the 66th Grammy Awards. Together they performed a duet of the song she had written over 35 years ago. Here’s the clip of that performance, for those wondering what a truly epic team-up between a legendary Black performer and her biggest fan can look like:
Of course, all of this is happening in large part because Luke Combs, born in 1990, decided to record a cover of a song that he has been listening to since his infancy. As he describes it, “Fast Car” was “his favorite song before he knew what a favorite song was”—I assume this is because his parents are about my age, and one or both of them were Chapman fans in the 1990’s.
Needless to say, his decision to cover the song was a good one. Chapman’s original performance of “Fast Car” made it to #6 on the Billboard Top 100 in the late 1980’s, but the Combs version made it to #2, and it was by far the most popular single on his last album.
The Combs version of “Fast Car” also won two very important awards at the 57th Annual Country Music Association Awards in November 2023. “Single of the Year”, went to Combs as the performer—but it also won “Song of the Year”, which goes to the songwriter. And that’s how Tracy Chapman became the first Black songwriter ever to win that award in the entire 57-year history of the event.
Chapman didn’t attend the Country Music Awards ceremony to accept her historic award in person. But she did make it to the Grammy Awards a week ago, summoned back into the spotlight by a young White man from North Carolina. And since fans around the world witnessed that performance, Billboard reports that the sales of her original recording of “Fast Car” have skyrocketed over 38,000 percent.
Suddenly news outlets all over the world are talking about her music, asking questions about her skin care regime, outing her long-ago love affair with Alice Walker, and trying to track down the custom-made black Prada shirt and blue jeans that she wore on stage—a callback to the simple black sweater and jeans that she wore on her first Grammy Awards performance in 1989, when she was 22 years old.
I am fascinated to see whole phenomenon unfold. Watching younger generations discover her music for the first time is a trip. I was shocked when I played her debut album for a Millennial man in his 30’s and he mistook Chapman’s legendary voice—that rich, warm, buttery contralto--for a man’s voice.
I’m equally shocked by young queer writers who listen to her most painful love songs and find them “hopeful”. I mean…tragic, certainly. Romantic maybe. But hopeful? Really?
All of this is reminding me of the way her debut album hit me in 1988, when I was memorizing the melodies and lyrics in that dilapidated studio apartment. Every Chapman song felt very close to my skin in the late 1980’s. I had a very powerful sense that she was singing not just to me, but about me.
She was a fearless lyricist, willing to take on any aspect of the human experience. In a single album she had collected eloquent, haunting songs about social justice and revolution, domestic violence, and the lure of materialism. But these Big Issue songs seemed to fit effortlessly into the very intimate songs about navigating relationships, leaving home and achieving freedom for the first time, or losing your head and your heart to someone who could be trusted with neither.
For me, it was an album that arrived at the perfect time. I was a broke queer 18-year-old trying to navigate a tempestuous first relationship with another equally broke queer 22-year-old. Both of us had survived terrible childhoods that we desperately wanted to leave behind us. Both of us felt stuck in the small town where we met. Both of us were so desperate to get the hell out of red state America—a trap with walls made of poverty, trauma and homophobia—that we were practically climbing over one another like drowning rats in a bottle.
Chapman came along at just that moment and made me feel seen in a way that few musicians ever had, or ever would again. When she sang about welfare lines, thrift stores, dead-end jobs, shelters, alcoholic or absentee parents, I believed she spoke from experience. And she sounded equally sincere and authoritative when she wrote about the fear of getting every material thing she ever wanted—and still dying alone on a pile of wealth that could never buy real love or companionship.
Though we were close in age, I never learned much about Chapman’s biography when I was 18. I assumed that because she was a Black musical prodigy and I was whatever the hell I am, that we probably wouldn’t have much in common. But my research for this little essay surprised me. Chapman was raised by a single mother, like me. She spent a great deal of time in the library as a child, too. She studied Anthropology at Tufts and planned to become a professional anthropologist before she was “discovered” playing coffeehouse folk music and given a pro recording contract—and while I did my BA at the University of Tennessee later in life, I was an anthropology major as well.
Even a brief summary of the years that followed Chapman’s celebrated debut can say a lot about her. She won three Grammy’s in 1989: Best Folk Album, Best New Artist, and Best Female Vocal Performance (for “Fast Car”). That album went on to sell over 20 million copies, and she became one of the first female performers in history to achieve that milestone.
Chapman’s years in the public eye were invested in recording seven more albums, four of which went platinum and produced other hit songs. “Give Me One Reason to Stay Here”, which won the Grammy for Best Rock Song in 1995, remains a personal favorite of mine—I’ve been a Blues fan since 1986, so this one was always going to hit me where I live.
She also spent a great deal of time touring, not only to promote her own music but to lend her support to charitable causes. Her first break-out public performance was for an Amnesty International event, the celebration of Nelson Mandela’s birthday in London; her lively impromptu performance won the hearts of the world and launched her stardom in earnest. In later years she would tour for weeks with other superstar musicians to raise money for the organization. Over the last thirty years she has contributed her money and her stage presence to AID/HIV research and relief fund raisers, charities that focus on Cambodia and Tibet, and organizations that combat poverty world-wide.
Her latest duet at the Grammy Awards has caused an uproar, but it is hardly her first. There are YouTube videos available of her performing live with many men over the years, including Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, and even Luciano Pavarotti.
She has made history over and over, and will always be a person I deeply admire—not only for her lifetime of incredible songs and performances, but for her strength of character. It has always been difficult for celebrities to keep their private lives to themselves. Chapman has been able to walk away when the world wants much more than she is willing to give, and I respect the way she has protected the people she loves most from her fans.
She’s a shining moment in Black History, a treasured part of my personal history, and a reminder that there are some women that you really can love forever.
Especially if they can play the guitar.
Resources
Wikipedia: Tracy Chapman (person)
Wikipedia: Tracy Chapman (album)
Tracy Chapman’s Authorized Biography by Nigel Williamson, 2001
XtraMagazine: What the Internet is Getting Wrong About Tracy Chapman
XtraMagazine: Tracy Chapman is the Queer Mentor I Didn’t Know I Needed
The Guardian: Interview with Alice Walker, 2006
CBS: Sales of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" soar 38,400% after Grammys performance
TheWorld.org: Tracy Chapman's new greatest hits album celebrates a quietly powerful legacy
Tracy Chapman: remembering her remarkable debut 30 years on on BBC Radio 4