A Glitch and a Fast Car

"The Nelson Mandela 70th Tribute Concert was held on June 11, 1988 at the Wembley Stadium, London. To celebrate Nelson Mandela, the biggest stars performed songs of freedom, hope and love in front of 72,000 people at the Wembley Stadium and more than 600 million television viewers from 60 countries who watched the broadcast. Then Tracy Chapman burst out there performing Fast Car."

(about-tracy-chapman.net / Marc Cooper, Q Magazine, September 1988)

It should have been the surprise appearance of  Stevie Wonder. But with consternation he was finding out, that the floppy disk for his keyboard, which was indispensable for his performance, had gone missing and that he therefore was unable to perform. So an artist was called back to the stage, who didn't need much more than a guitar to perform.

"I literally had to run to the stage, dragging my guitar cable", then 24-year old  Tracy Chapman remembered her first big international appearance. After she had already performed 3 songs earlier (among them the fitting 'Talkin'Bout a Revolution') she improvised by singing 2 additional songs from her just released debut album by the same name: the official first single 'Fast Car' and 'Across the Lines'.

Both of these appearances lead to the fact, that her album sold some 1.75 mio. units over the next 2 weeks and made the track 'Fast Car' a worldwide hit. The single reached number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, number 5 on the UK Singles Charts and number 4 in Australia. And at the following Grammy Awards in 1989 Tracy Chapman received no less than 6 nominations (among them Song and Record of the Year for 'Fast Car'), eventually receiving 3 Grammy Awards (more than anyone else that night), among them the one for Best New Artist.

The album received the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, a genre which she was predominantly categorized with because of her sociocritical lyrics and mostly acoustic music style. Questioned about her fascination with acoustic music, she said in the Travis Smiley Show (2005):

"My family used to watch this show called Hee Haw. It was a Country Music variety show, with Glen Campbell, Buck Owens, Minnie Pearl, I think. They all played acoustic guitars and I think I just love the sound and the look of a guitar, so I thought it would be a good instrument to play. It resonated with me and I asked my mom for a guitar."

While the Grammy Award for Song of the Year went to Bobby McFerrin for 'Don't Worry, Be Happy', the fascination with 'Fast Car' has endured to this very day. Despite the fact, that it actually is a tragic story, the missing happy end of which gets typically looked over by most casual listeners. Still it remains as a story about hopes and dreams, but also about bitter reality.

In an interview with the BBC , Tracy Chapman said about the theme of the song: "It wasn't directly autobiographical. I never had a fast car. It's a story about a couple and how they are trying to make a life together and they face various challenges." 

You got a fast car,
I got a plan to get us outta here.
I been working at the convenience store,
managed to save just a little bit of money.
Won't have to drive too far,
just 'cross the border and into the city.
You and I can both get jobs
and finally see what it means to be living.

(Fast Car / Tracy Chapman)

But this is not only about making a poor living, but also about coping with a dysfunctional family situation. For while her mother has long left, she is taking care of her alcoholic father:

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.
My mama went off and left him.
She wanted more from life than he could give.
I said somebody's got to take care of him,
so I quit school and that's what I did.

(Fast Car / Tracy Chapman)

 

These are less than encouraging life circumstances. And it will require a strict decision to eventually grab a chance at moving on:

You got a fast car,
is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision,
leave tonight or live and die this way.

So both of them turn towards a more hopeful future, by leaving behind a bleak present. It is this moment that most listeners identify with in the song. To pull oneself out of misery and grasp hope and confidence for a better future.

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car,
speed so fast it felt like I was drunk.
City lights lay out before us
and your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder,
and I had a feeling that I belonged,
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone.

You still ain't got a job
and I work in the market as a checkout girl,
[but] I know things will get better.
You'll find work and I'll get promoted.
We'll move out of the shelter,
buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs.

(Fast Car / Tracy Chapman)

That's the moment when the story of the song could have had a happy ending. But it does not! Instead it moves onto a resigning open-end. Again it's reality that seems to refuse hopes and dreams. For in the emerging disenchantment the protagonist finds herself again in a situation, where she has to take care of a person unable to handle life. And again the car turns into a metapher for a potential re-start, even though it is much less optimistic and hopeful this time.

You got a fast car.
I got a job that pays all our bills.
You stay out drinking late at the bar,
see more of your friends than you do of your kids.

I'd always hoped for better.
Thought maybe together you and me'd find it.
I got no plans, I ain't going nowhere.
Take your fast car and keep on driving.
(Fast Car / Tracy Chapman)

It wasn't until 2 years after the release of 'Fast Car', that Luke Combs was born. Yet he refers to the song as one of his all-time favorites. "I remember listening to that song with my dad in his truck when I was probably four years old", he tells musicmayhemmagazine.com. "He had a cassette, a tape of it, and we had this old brown camper top F-150. [It’s] my first favorite song probably ever."

Emphasizing with smoothradio.com: "It's always been one of my favorites and I covered it in college and just kind of continued to play it around the house or whatever, and did a video of it in 2020. It's been such a big part of my life that I just figured it would be cool to do an official version of it."

When Luke Combs released his fourth studio album "Gettin' Old" on March 24, 2023, it contained 'Fast Car' and hence the first official cover song of his career. However the song was not planned as a candidate for a single. Instead the more traditional love ballad 'Love You Anyway' was chosen as the first single of the album.

But it didn't take long until requests for the album track 'Fast Car' were building so much momentum, that radio stations started adding it to their playlists without any official promotion for the song to do so. Consequently the song started climbing the radio charts. So when the label eventually initiated the official promotion for the song, it was already sitting at number 12 on the Radio (Billboard Country Airplay) Chart.

After only 11 incredible weeks 'Fast Car' became the 15th Number One hit for Luke Combs on the Radio (Billboard Country Airplay) Chart at the beginning of July 2023 (thereby passing the official single 'Love You Anyway' which has only reached the Top-10 by now). And it has been sitting at the summit for already 3 weeks now!

To top it off, the song turned into an unexpected pop hit, when reaching Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 2 weeks at the beginning of July. Which made it a bigger hit for Luke Combs than for the original songwriter herself, who only got it to Number 6 in 1988.

This makes 'Fast Car' the surprise-hit of 2023 already! After all, who would have bet on a cover song without much promotion and virtually no change to the original (Luke Combs even left the line about the checkout girl in there) to become a second favorite song in all of America in 2023?

There is no legal requirement to seek approval for recording a cover-version of a song. That's what royalty payments are for (Billboard Magazine has estimated that Luke Combs' version has achieved some 500,000 dollars worth of royalties for Tracy Chapman to date).

Still Luke Combs points out some strict specific license regulations for the song during his conversation with YouTuber Grady Smith: "I can't make any videos. Can't do a music video. I couldn't promo that before the album came out. Couldn't be like: it's gonna have 'Fast Car' on it. I can't license it to a TV show, because I don't own the publishing on it."

By now Tracy Chapman, who doesn't seem to do interviews anymore, has officially reacted to the new success of her song: "I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there. And I’m happy for Luke and his success."

A success, that other cover versions of the song over the past 20 years did not achieve. Which means, Luke Combs presumably got a lot more people acquainted with the song and made them fans of it. Even though many of them may remain unaware, that the song was written by African American singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman and probably only became a worldwide hit because of a technical glitch in 1988.