Tracy Chapman

i love her entire catalogue tbrr

Didn't "Fast Car" stay popular through the nineties/early 2000s though, or become popular again, or something? I definitely think of it as a song I grew up with, though it was theoretically before my time.

I do have her first album, which impressively remains on Wikipedia's biggest-selling-ever page: 20 million copies.

Damn right impressive. I may not be a fan, but objectively speaking, it's stunning that an album like that became a massive blockbuster. Given how it was made, the subject matter, etc., I think that kind of success is pretty great.

I guess I imagined the revolution she had in mind was more than a Democratic presidential victory, but, yes, Bush winning couldn't have been heartening.

(xpost) Maybe? I don't know that it's ever really gone away--I've always heard it every so often. I guess it's relegated to Adult Contemporary stations, or whatever they're called now. The Nice and Smooth song might have helped keep it around through the '90s.

TS: "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman or "Sometimes I Rhyme Slow" by Nice & Smooth

I was there (clem too) when the debut and "Fast Car" took root in the most mechanized -- I imply no judgment -- top 40 of my lifetime to date. These exceptions happened: think "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Luka" the year before.

"fast car" is pretty much a perfect song i reckon

rt

agree

~ be someone be someone ~
😢

honestly that song might be The Great American Novel

not on the level of "Fast Car," but i remain fond of "Mountains o' Things" off the first album, even if the lyrics are rather on the nose.

and "Talkin' Bout a Revolution."

Hard to remember exactly, but maybe Chapman and Vega helped open some space for Sinead O'Connor's big chart breakthrough in 1990?

(Enya, Tinita Tikram...I've probably forgotten someone; there were a mini-boom of female singer-songwriters then.)

Poor grammar were around too.

Hard to remember exactly, but maybe Chapman and Vega helped open some space for Sinead O'Connor's big chart breakthrough in 1990?

(Enya, Tinita Tikram...I've probably forgotten someone; there was a mini-boom of female singer-songwriters then.)

I don't know if they were really lumped in together, but I never associated Enya or O'Connor with Vega and Chapman, they just seemed fundamentally different.

Like Chapman, I'm not really a fan of Vega's albums (much less so) - but "Luka"'s a great single. The one figure (or rather the one album) out of the "folk revival" scene that really stood out for me was Michelle Shocked's Short Sharp Shocked. I didn't even discover it until last year and surprisingly loved it. It's too bad her career went in a crazy direction after that.

(FWIW, here's Greg Kot's contemporary write-up of the "folk revival" https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-04-06-8904010655-story.html )

(I should add I never associated Enya with O'Connor either. She joked that she started shaving her head again because someone mistook her for Enya - at least I hope it was a joke.)

The thing all of those ^^ acts had in common was heavy rotation on VH-1.

Vega's best album = 99.9F.

i'm not sure I'd go that far but it's top three for sure

Luka and Fast Car are indeed terrific, era-defining singles from two artists whom I’ve never really been able to get into otherwise.

'Fast Car' was too omnipresent when I was too young to really appreciate it but it's revealed its beauty + genius to me in recent years.

As has 'Baby, Can I Hold You', which I have a hard time getting through without misting up.

After a related conversation, I made this 80s folk mix, not meant to cover all the bases, just some favorites.

She's not a great singer or songwriter, but I really appreciated the soundstage of her first album. Maybe I'm influenced by the look of the album cover and the videos, but it's the way the instruments and the mix outline a shadowy world. Understated but dramatic.

"fast car" is pretty much a perfect song i reckon

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, March 8, 2021 5:49 PM bookmarkflaglink

every time I hear Fast Car it I get emotional in a very sort of non-specific way, i can’t account for it. Those moods of hope & loss & desperation just bubbles something up inside me

with my circle of friends & outside friends & acquaintances it was always THE song that everybody sang together, guy or girl, old or young... like you just have to go for it & give it your anguished best

its an incredible song, no question

once I was going through a tough time and I heard it at Walgreens and started crying

the lyrics always get me, but she also sings it with such conviction.

that verse...

"See, my old man's got a problem
He lives with the bottle, that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
His body's too young to look like his"

i feel like, if you haven't had that experience before, i can't talk to you xp

also I - I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone

yeah there are so many lines that hit in the song....

once I was going through a tough time and I heard it at Walgreens and started crying

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

this happened to me the other day when I heard "Breakout" at CVS.

that's so weird. "Breakout" was one that I heard at Wawa during a rough period in 2017 and it had a similar effect on me. although that particular time it was the first time I'd heard it in decades!

honestly that song might be The Great American Novel

― Lily Dale, Monday, March 8, 2021 5:54 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

co-sign

I feel like I have a mental map of all the places I have heard "Fast Car" unexpectedly.

The first time I remember thinking, "this feels like the chorus of Fast Car," I was on a school exchange in Russia at age fifteen, and we were on a bus that was going much too fast in the dark and the snow between Novgorod and St. Petersburg, and we were all kind of joking about how we might die, and I felt overwhelmed by a sense of how much I loved everyone there and the conviction that for once in my life I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I haven't kept in touch with any of those people, of course, but I don't think that would have surprised fifteen-year-old me; inherent in thinking "This feels like Fast Car" is realizing that the feeling won't last and one day you will feel an almost unbearable nostalgia for it.

She's not a great singer or songwriter,

once I was going through a tough time and I heard it at Walgreens and started crying

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

this happened to me the other day when I heard "Breakout" at CVS.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 8, 2021 7:54 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

me and "that's what love is for" by amy grant. also if pharmacies played prefab sprout's "life of surprises" i would collapse in the middle of the aisle every time

where does Miami Sound Machine "Words Get in the Way" fit on the "in-store emotional reactions" scale

"Keep Ya Head Up" did this to me once, shortly after a death in the family.

the thing about this song that amazes me is that it does so many things: the actual story the song tells is clear and believable and heartbreaking and covers years of a life in a few short verses, and yet what sticks in your mind is something even more powerful, this overwhelming feeling that surges up from the chorus, of hope and clarity and loss and nostalgia, the feeling of youth and the feeling of not being young anymore, somehow encapsulated together.

be someone
be someone

I'm guessing no-one will agree there's one chorus too many?

I find the experience of listening to Fast Car so intense that I've never been able to spend enough time with it to think critically about whether there's one chorus too many or not. Every time I hear it, it just rolls over me like a tsunami of pure emotion and changes my mood for a few hours at least.

Didn't realize Neil Diamond covered "Baby Can I Hold You" contemporaneously with her first album. Schmaltzy af, but it's such a solid song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_IwMyDq9gE

I'll usually put on "Sometimes I Rhyme Slow" after to smooth myself out.

xp

Lily Dale completely otm

there was a pop-house track a few years ago by somebody named Jonas Blue that used a sped up sample of Fast Car and it was absolutely massive. but maybe that just shows the power of the song. despite being stretched and twisted into almost unrecognizable shapes it retains this pulsating uranium core of bittersweet nostalgia and hope and loss that will long outlive whatever container happens to be carrying it that year

Enya appears on Sinead's first album!

Something about this poster makes me realize Chapman could have ended up a Rounder Records folk artist if the time and opportunity had been off.

We are thrilled to see Tracy Chapman get all the love after that transcendent Grammy performance! A new generation of folks are falling in love with her, just as we did back in 1985 when she played our room for $4.50. Check out this vintage poster that still hangs in the club. pic.twitter.com/Ois41mFxwr

— Club Passim (@clubpassim) February 7, 2024

“Fast Car” racked up 949,000 official on-demand U.S. streams on Monday (Feb. 5), the day following the Grammys — up 241% from the 278,000 it notched the prior Monday (Jan. 29). That’s a big gain, though it’s nothing compared to how the song exploded in digital song sales, soaring 38,400% from a negligible amount to nearly 14,000. The Combs version also saw some huge gains over the same period, rising 37% in streams to nearly 1.6 million and nearly 3,900% in sales to just over 6,000.

Could it be enough for Chapman’s “Fast Car,” which originally peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988 to return to the chart? It’s not impossible, though it will have to do well enough to make the top half of the chart to be eligible for a re-entrance, due to Billboard chart rules about catalog songs. If it keeps cruising through the week on its early momentum though, it may have a shot — and as of Wednesday, it was still No. 2 and No. 52 on the daily U.S. charts for iTunes and Spotify, respectively.

xpost Speaking of that era, Elijah Wald with a great post and photo:

https://www.facebook.com/elijah.wald/posts/pfbid035xdeq7XGWAHJY7TrexbEn1L3XLLhpSTyo8Kqv9qSmvH3Bthb189uViEatYvdbHPyl

love that Passim poster, glad to see they still exist

There was a WTF interview years ago with Brian Koppelman where he talks about "discovering" Tracy Chapman and helping her get her record deal.

Anyway, has Chapman performed on tv or even performed at all between the wind-down of Letterman's show and this year's Grammys?

I don't think so - I remember the Letterman appearance being singled out years later as her last public performance.

I've always loved "Fast Car," it's probably one of my favorite singles from the '80s, so the revival it's getting is very welcome, but I kind of wish the rest of her debut was as starkly produced. The a cappella "Behind the Wall" is also great, but the full-band arrangements for songs like "Mountains o' Things" and "For My Lover" kind of dilute the impact.

Dang, I need to go play "For my Lover"

Good Oxford American essay on For My Lover

back in the 80s I saw Tracy Chapman in the Cleveland airport and lost my shit bc I was 12 and had never seen a musician in an airport before, or even a musician IRL. i went over to say hi and say thank you, and she was very gracious and kind.

My friend used to work at a fancy boutique grocery story in San Francisco and once gave Tracy Chapman advice on which cheese to buy. I think I would have fainted.

If you don’t feel an immense amount of humility in covering this finely wrought, hand drawn map of human frailty, then you probably wouldn’t even have liked the song in the first place.

truth bomb

yeah I only saw a clip of the Grammy performance but I was moved as hell. And like Alfred, Combs heartfelt looks of admiration towards Chapman struck me as well and hit me hard as a music lover. Sorry for corn. Heart emoji.

I posted this in the Springsteen thread, but I've always loved this clip of Chapman and Springsteen singing "My Hometown."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCYbnLNEPD4

Not crazy about the way “Fast Car” has become a “meme” on social media in the past week; but these are the times we live in…

Fast Car (Bass Boosted)

Something I'd completely forgotten until I got talking with another retired teacher today; we both supply now, both used to work at the same board, and she was telling me that she and her husband are seeing Springsteen in Barcelona in a few months, which led me back--the clip above should have been enough of a reminder--to seeing Chapman in 1988 at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens as part of the Amnesty International show with Springsteen, Gabriel, and others. Normally not my kind of thing, but I was seeing a woman at the time who wanted to go.

Springsteen, Sting, Youssou N'Dour, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and k.d. lang...that's totally a line-up I would go to see if it was 1988. (Even Sting's set is mostly good, leaning heavily on the Police and bringing in Gabriel for a duet on one of his better solo numbers.)

(FWIW, per that article, face value was $30...that's still only $66 today if that's all Canadian dollars.)

Somewhere this week I read that the Amnesty show was a big break for her, last-minute filling in for a big name that had to drop out.

Looks like "Fast Car" did re-enter the Top 100 on Billboard somewhere around #40.

She lives (lived?) by my kids preschool so I'd see her cruising by every once in a while...

on foot, not in a...

fast car.

https://i.postimg.cc/Sxj7WsnT/tracy.jpg

Lol at that sandwiching

I kind of wish the rest of her debut was as starkly produced. The a cappella "Behind the Wall" is also great, but the full-band arrangements for songs like "Mountains o' Things" and "For My Lover" kind of dilute the impact.

It finally occurred to me that her tour supporting her debut was probably what I was hoping for and sure enough there are plenty of bootlegs out there including several soundboard recordings.

In terms of sound quality, this one isn't the best - a cassette dub of a soundboard recording, from the looks of it, it wasn't bootlegged at the correct speed & pitch and this YouTube upload comes from an attempt to correct that. I'm posting here because the second song is unfamiliar and couldn't be identified. The uploader refers to it as "If I Ask You." Is this one of Chapman's unreleased originals or is it a cover?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbFt0MOVHCQ

(It's at 03:23 - for some reason, I wasn't able to post a site-generated link that went to that spot.)

July 1988 shows in Montreux and Philly seem to be the best in terms of audio. Should be easy to find out there in lossless form.