Tracy Chapman

Woops, morrisp, my mistake

i find the hate that luke combs is getting over this to be extremely excessive! idc about the cover one way or another, but it's very very faithful to the original (even keeps the "checkout girl" line without changing the gender), and combs has been effusive in his praise for chapman and the original. tracy gave the version her blessing, performed it on the grammys as a duet. i could go on. just feels like it hits the sweet spot of people's very weird cultural feelings about country music and what it signifies, without considering the particulars of the situation.

yeah it's dumb. I don't care about him or his version at all but there doesn't seem to be anything worth hating there. He's made her a bunch more money and keeps talking about her. That's great!

I think you can be happy for Tracy Chapman and find the cover barely mediocre at the same time.

yeah sometimes I feel like people are acting like Crazy Town remade the song or something

What it's interesting about the Combs cover in the context of contemporary country music is how the character in the song's got a plan to get out of town because it sucks and he can't find the love he wants, whereas most country songs by men celebrate the small town or defensive about it even if they gotta be blind-drunk to celebrate/get defensive about it.

People seemed upset that his version charted higher than hers, but both made the top 10 (#6 vs. #2). Given all the differences between then and now in terms of how songs become hits (not to mention Billboard's ever-changing chart formulas), that difference really doesn't seem worth arguing about.

^^^ exactly

I know his version of the song was huge but it really feels more like a Tracy Chapman cultural moment then a Luke Combs breakthrough

just feels like it hits the sweet spot of people's very weird cultural feelings about country music and what it signifies

I was spending time on Bluesky around the time the cover came out, and the number of... takes... around this (which seemed to have very little to do with music) were just stultifying

Luke Combs, until yesterday or maybe the day before my wife confused him with Luke Bryan, which shows what kind of impression he made.

Yeah 1988's #6 meant a lot more than 2023's #2

Seriously.

Luther Campbell should cover "Fast Car," let's see what the internet thinks of that.

Maybe he'll make something

if luke bryan covered fast car it’d somehow end up being about how hot she looks in jeans driving his fast car

i find the hate that luke combs is getting over this to be extremely excessive! idc about the cover one way or another, but it's very very faithful to the original (even keeps the "checkout girl" line without changing the gender), and combs has been effusive in his praise for chapman and the original. tracy gave the version her blessing, performed it on the grammys as a duet. i could go on. just feels like it hits the sweet spot of people's very weird cultural feelings about country music and what it signifies, without considering the particulars of the situation.

I was annoyed by the Luke Combs cover until I heard it and saw him basically paying homage to Tracy Chapman every time he happened to cross my radar; at that point it was clear she wasn’t being done dirty and I got over myself.

Almost as moving for me as listening to Chapman were the adoring looks that Combs kept showing her. The dude obv means it.

And what if you heard the song 30 times and decided it wasn't any good without knowing who did it or any backstory whatsoever?

I mean, it's fine, I am not bitter or anything, but I'd been playing a bluegrass-ish version of Fast Car on mandola/in for like a decade. But now I can't, so.

Also, Chapman is making beaucoup bucks off this cover, reportedly

And what if you heard the song 30 times and decided it wasn't any good without knowing who did it or any backstory whatsoever?

― clemenza, Monday, February 5, 2024 1

I...don't think anyone here was coercing anyone into liking the cover? The consensus seems to be, "This is fine, hooray for Tracy Chapman."

From last July. It's more now:

How Much Has Tracy Chapman Earned from Luke Combs’ ‘Fast Car’ Cover? https://t.co/ExmbH1Hb2T

— billboard (@billboard) June 16, 2023

And what if you heard the song 30 times and decided it wasn't any good without knowing who did it or any backstory whatsoever?

obv it’s time for reeducational flogging

I think he was talking about hearing the cover, which is in a sense the very definition of a "reeducational flogging" for those that didn't know or remember the original.

I think the question we really need to be asking is What is Tracy Chapman's net worth?

I heard her uncle invented the Chapman Stick.

Also, Chapstick.

My question was a response to this: "most ppl who engage with art in this fashion are not able to adjust their POVs when presented with conflicting information." When I decided the cover was tepid and pointless (I exaggerated; I didn't need to hear it 30 times, more like three or four), I had no conflicting information; I had no information at all.

I am, again, very happy to see Tracy Chapman get all those royalties. Given a choice (and assuming equal compensation, which maybewouldn't be the case), I would rather the origninal had made a return like "Running Up That Hill" via a movie or TV show. I've always loved hearing the orignal on the radio a few times a year almost nonstop since it was a hit--it always comes from some other place next to whatever's around it. But what often happens in terms of radio in these cases is the origninal disappears in favor of the cover--ask Harold Melvin or Percy Sledge. (Actually, you can't.) She'll get the royalties, you just might not hear Tracy Chapman singing "Fast Car" anymore.

I mean, she also made $450,000 after Nicki Minaj tried to sample "Baby Can I Hold You."

2021 story on that

Post

Jesus--"origninal" twice?

Her four most recent setlists:

FEB 4 2024
Tracy Chapman at 66th Grammy Awards

Fast Car

NOV 2 2020
Tracy Chapman at Late Night with Seth Meyers, New York, NY, USA
Talkin' 'bout a Revolution

APR 16 2015
Tracy Chapman at Late Show With David Letterman, New York, NY, USA

Stand by Me

DEC 2 2012
Tracy Chapman at Kennedy Center Honors 2012

Hound Dog
Sweet Home Chicago

a similar example as far as covers might go was when No Doubt covered "It's My Life", the cover was ubiquitous for awhile but i hardly hear it anymore but i do hear Talk Talk's original out in the wild a lot.

xxpost Clever of you to change the spelling to get the trademark.

xxxxxpost You think the radio stations that were playing the Tracy Chapman version are going to play the Combs version instead?

Depending upon the station, I hear the Simply Red and Michael Bolton covers regularly. I thought they'd disappear too. They haven't.

Not all stations, but some will for sure. Whatever stations at whatever point in the future are directed at the audience who made the cover a hit, that's what they'll play.

Everyone, I have to break in and mention that I don't know why-in-the-f I said (above) that the original song was in the "Barbie" movie; I was thinking of a totally different song from the same era. Thanks for not calling me on this "brain f*rt" (...a phrase a loathe, but I'm going to punish myself by using it here).

Clearly you think all female folk singers from the late '80s sound the same.

At this point Chapman's version has more than double the Spotify streams than Combs' version-- 800 million to 376 million. And that's after Combs being on the charts for 44 weeks.

Im trying to imagine where they could possibly have used “Fast Car” in the Barbie movie

Ken sings it

I bet they could've made Allan sing it

Maybe when they are driving the car?

That must have been what got my wires crossed, yeah...

"Fast Car" might have actually made more sense than "Closer to Fine" as a driving away song but it's too much of a bummer

(xposts) That's good--honestly, my engagement with Spotify is minimal. I'm thinking more in terms of radio, and, again, going by the dogged persistance of many bad cover versions I could name.

There's also an L.A. car chase iirc

and speaking of "dogged persistence"

Closer to Fast Car