Tracy Chapman

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

Try That In A Fast Car

It also kind of totally defeats the point I was making – in that "Fast Car" was a much bigger hit than "Closer to Fine." So I suppose what actually made that song "work so well" was that it's one folks of a certain age will recognize, but doesn't otherwise have a big cultural presence (whereas the Combs cover of "Fast Car" was released around the same time as the movie). Same with the Matchbox 20 song... such great choices for the way they were used, IMO

Fast Car has like seven verses? Nine? I lose track.

Just checked, it's probably six or seven, depending how you count. Verse 4 is a half-verse and verse 7 is a repeat of verse 4. I think. But feel free to correct me if I have it wrong.

So Europeans took a crack at this already

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnspjM3RG4Q

you just might not hear Tracy Chapman singing "Fast Car" anymore.

― clemenza, Monday, February 5, 2024 1:40 PM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i just hard her singing fast caar at the grammys yesterday

The Jonas Blue version peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart, behind Zayn Malik's "Pillowtalk".[66] Its UK peak meant it charted higher than Chapman's original

Are you guys okay?

i remember exactly where i was when i heard the jonas blue version, it was a windowless gym which was lucky because i would have hurled something through some plate glass right then if i could have

My dogged persistence.

I assume the number of streams on Spotify is the number beside the song's running time when you look up that page?

https://i.postimg.cc/mgVsnrwk/percy.jpg

If so, Percy Sledge's original has 202,187,066 streams.
Michael Bolton's cover: 202,477,576--almost dead even, but more for the cover.
Harold Melvin's "If You Don't Know Me by Now": 64,745,809.
Simply Red's cover: 252,963,471--four times as many.

I don't know if I'm reading those numbers right, or what time-frame they refer to. And maybe those aren't good analogies for Tracy Chapman/Luke Combs. But over time, these things do not necessarily turn out like they should.

How “should” they turn out?

It’s pretty much a given fact of music consumption that the original version of a piece of music is not necessarily the definitive version. In fact, I’d argue that there’s no pint in worrying about the definitive version of a song, particularly one like “Fast Car” which seems to my ears to be constructed in an easily-digestible manner that almost invites other musicians to take their own stab at it.

You also can't test how much the covers may have "lifted up" the originals, by drawing attn (for some listeners) that they may not have otherwise received...

(xpost) I think that's true with some songs, but I absolutely think that some originals are definitive, and I don't want them to fade over time and be relaplaced by an inferior cover. And I definitely include "Fast Car" in that category.

apologies if this was already noted, but as of this morning the Chapman version was the number 1 streamed track on iTunes

Ah good, things are turning out like they should now

jonas blue's version of "fast car" has 1.1 billion (with a "b") streams

I have given "origninal" a partner with "relaplaced"...I think I need to switch to voice text or something.

That was mentioned earlier, and again, that's good to hear. Guess I'm thinking more years from now. Anyway, I don't like the cover, and that was really all I came on here to say.

It would have been funny if Jonas Blue had rushed the Grammy stage with a glow stick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkl_Vq1SWKg

Only version I'm playing^

"Fast Car" was a popular song and it still is.

clemenza, I’m not cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs over the cover either but I’m happy it’s not a) blatantly offensive, and b) done by someone determined to give Tracy Chapman all the shine she deserves for writing the song

"sometimes i rhyme slow" is great

Now that, I loved.

hell yeah

i was on 125 and st. nick

I got a plan
to get us outta this thread

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.

How often was this 35 year old song getting played on the radio (and where) to start with?!

It was like Norah Jones’s “Don’t Know Why” at the time, in heavy rotation, and never fully left CVS playlists. Outlasted “Luka.”

Yeah, the places that do play it are ones that play folky stuff or 80s music and they aren’t going to swap it out for a Country cover.

a note-perfect country cover even

I still heard "Fast Car" a fair amount even before the Combs cover — on '80s oldies stations, or Jack FM stations, it's never really gone out of circulation I don't think.

I find the Combs cover stupendous, I'm slightly embarrased to say brought tears to my eyes when it randomly popped up as I was listening to the NPR 2023 playlist, still can't quite put my finger on why it works so well, but alpine static described it well:

deference, i think, is the word you're looking for. he just plays it as best he can w/o doing all sorts of shit to "make it his own" because, assuming we believe him, he just loves the song and it makes him think of his dad.

this is why it's good.

― alpine static, 31. december 2023 00:06 (one month ago)

well, also because Tracy Chapman wrote an incredible song

― alpine static, 31. december 2023 05:22 (one month ago)

I had not heard "give me one reason" prior to the fast car revival, so that's been a pleasant surprise