On Sunday night, Grammy Award host Trevor Noah began a segment about country singer Luke Combs and the first song he learned to play on the guitar. Combs described it as “my favorite song before I knew it was my favorite song.”
When the segment was over, the broadcast cut to a pair of hands — a pair of Black hands — playing an iconic opening riff.
Luke Combs is White. It was not him playing the guitar.
As the lights went up and the camera pulled back, the crowd roared.
The iconic riff belonged to the 1988 song, “Fast Car.”
The Black hands belonged to singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman, who made her splash into the music world in the mid-‘80’s. “Fast Car” got to number six on the Billboard Hot 100. It also won her three Grammy nominations: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She won in the latter category.
Last year, Luke Combs fulfilled a dream and recorded “Fast Car” as a single. He sang it straight, not changing a word, even down to singing, “work as a checkout girl”. His version hit number one on the Country Airplay chart, making Chapman the first Black woman to have a number one country song with a solo composition. “Fast Car” also won Song of the Year, making her the first Black songwriter to ever win that award.
When Tracy Chapman stepped on stage at Sunday’s Grammys and began to strum the opening riff of “Fast Car”, it marked the first time in nine years that she’d performed live. I don’t know if it was common knowledge that Chapman would be there along with Combs; I have not followed the Grammys for many years and I barely knew the names of some artists who were nominated.
But that crowd roar, and then Tracy’s distinctive voice singing, “You got a fast car,” detonated a musical bomb in the audience of the Crypto.com arena. Her smile lit up her face as she realized the audience knew who it was playing the song.
Luke Combs stood next to her. They traded verses back and forth, coming together on the chorus, “I remember we were driving / Driving in your car . . .”
Throughout the song, when he wasn’t singing, Luke Combs was looking at Tracy, drawing attention to her. He had not brought an instrument. It was Tracy Chapman, with her guitar, and a couple of violins and a drum in the background.
And in the audience, people standing up, clapping along, singing along (CBS showed a two-second shot of Taylor Swift singing and dancing).
The energy must have been electric.
When the song ended, Luke gestured towards Tracy and bowed.
She bowed back.
And the audience cheered.
They cheered for an honest song that told the story of someone who wanted to “get out of here”, hoped for something better, and yet, in the end, ordered her significant other to “take your fast car and keep on driving.”
In a polished world of autotune, glitz, red carpet glamour, and scripted performances, Tracy Chapman appeared in a simple, button-down shirt and blue jeans, with only the silver in her hair hinting at her age (she will be 60 next month).
She slung her guitar over her shoulder and moved her fingers through the chords, performing like the artist she is.
In the end, it all came back to the music. It all came back to a song that made a young woman famous, and a song that, 36 years later, still had the raw power to bring an audience - an audience with members who probably are jaded at times with the industry - to its feet to pay tribute.
“Fast Car” shows the power of a song to bring two unlikely people - a Black female pop artist and a White male country artist - together.
It showed the respect and humility of a White artist honoring a Black artist who impacted his career in ways he could probably not have predicted.
The group Gallery, back in 1972, released the song “I Believe In Music”, which contained the line, “Music is the universal language.”
Sunday night, February 4, 2024, those who saw the Grammys saw an example of that universal language bringing people together, if only for those few moments.
Thank you, Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
