Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs' Grammy performance reminded us that we are connected in all our differences

They sang Chapman's "Fast Car" - a song from 36 years ago - and cracked our hearts open just a little bit.

I don’t watch the Grammy’s. But my nighttime Twitter scroll led me to Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs singing “Fast Car” after the fact. If you live in a cave and haven’t watched it in on repeat for the past 24 hours, here is is. Chapman’s original 1988 version is now #1 on iTunes.

66th GRAMMY Awards - Show LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 04: (FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY) (L-R) Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs perform during the 66th GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 04, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Timothy Norris/FilmMagic)

I’d never heard Combs’ version before but it is not an exaggeration to say I’ve listened to Chapman’s version thousands of times. It came out in 1988 and the cassette was constantly in my boombox during my freshman year in college. Along with Madonna’s True Blue (1986), Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 (1988), Keith Richards’ Talk is Cheap (1988), The Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Sessions (1988) and Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time (1989). I was having a rock/country moment. There was some Patsy Cline in the mix as well. Also in the rotation was Queen Latifah’s All Hail the Queen (1989). Not country.

I didn’t like a lot of the “alternative” music my peers were into. The Pixies, The Pogues and They Might Be Giants. It was fine. But for me, it lacked the heart of old school country and rock and roll and I didn’t want to dance to it like I wanted to dance to “Ladies First” by Queen Latifah. The Queen. And the alt rock or whatever category those other bands fell into never made me cry like “Fast Car.”

Somehow “Fast Car” summons the pain and yearning of youth with utter perfection. The way your heart goes from full and exploding to breaking from moment to moment. The fragility and determination all mixed up and right there, not even beneath the surface but at the surface and bubbling over. That was 19, for me. And 22. And 25. I was all the feels.

I can’t even find the words to write about what that song did to me in 1988. It soulfully captured the longing and wanting for a better life. Or maybe just a different life. YOUR life. The one you believe you are meant to have. The falling in love and having it consume you with hope and promise and joy and even recklessness, sometimes. The freedom to be whoever you want to be. The possibility of becoming that person. Because you’re not even 20. And you still can become whoever you believe you want to be.

And then, after lifting you up, the song rips your heart out, when none of it happens.

The song is often described as being about the struggle of escaping poverty and seeking a better life. And it is. But it’s also a love story. A gritty and realistic one that doesn’t fulfill its promise. As often happens in real life.

That song wrecked me every time. I was 19. I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to be in love and transported. And I wasn’t. And then when I was, it was unrequited. All the ache of it was in that song.

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

I wanted to be someone. I wanted to belong. I’d wanted to leave whatever shittiness I’d experienced behind — which was altogether different than the abuse and poverty described in the “Fast Car” lyrics. But I still wanted to shed myself of it.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t grow up poor. That my dad wasn’t a drunk and my mom hadn’t left him. I didn’t have to quit school to take care of anyone. I was in college. A fancy one. With two parents at home and together and paying for my education. I was lucky. I am lucky. And this song spoke to me.

See, my old man’s got a problem
He live 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

I’d almost forgotten how much I loved the Chapman album. Not just “Fast Car.” The entire thing. Start to finish. “Talkin’ About A Revolution,” “She’s Got Her Ticket” . . . all of it. You listened to albums start to finish back then. And I did. Over and over again.

It didn’t matter that I am not black or gay, like Chapman. Her voice and her words pulled my heart right out of my chest. It hurt to listen to it.

I went to see her live that same year. The Bridge Concert was an annual thing in Mountain View, California at Shoreline Amphitheater. It was an all-acoustic benefit show organized by Neil Young for The Bridge School — a school for children with severe physical and developmental disabilities. I think it is still happening today.

I believe I attended it 3 out of the 4 years I went to Stanford, just up the road from Shoreline Amphitheater.

I’d forgotten about it all. And then a friend from college, who I haven’t seen or talked to in maybe a decade, texted me today to say:

Hi Jen, how’s life? Seeing Tracy Chapman clips from Grammy’s reminded me of The Bridge Concert. I think a group of us saw [it] freshman year [. . .] I’ll be in Denver in June. Will you be around?

He didn’t care about my views or my advocacy or how I might be on a different wavelength politically. He didn’t care if I said public schools should have been open during covid or if I believe strongly that women’s sports and spaces need to be protected and for women only or if I went on Tucker Carlson’s show once or if I stand with Israel and am generally pissed off at the Left.

He just remembered that song, that concert, that time in our lives. That we were friends. Good friends. And we played that song over and over and we went to that show and we were different but the song spoke to all of us.

It makes me weepy now writing this.

Music means so much when you’re young. You just feel so damn much and the right song at the right moment crawls inside your skin and cracks your heart open.

I don’t listen to music as much anymore or if I do I listen to what my kids want to put on. And I’m old with young kids so I end up listening to juvenile shit that I don’t much like. But sometimes they listen to my songs and they really do like Cat Stevens and Neil Young and Rihanna. And I will say as much as I don’t love Taylor Swift (I agree with Meghan Murphy pretty much), goddamnit it’s catchy and I end up singing along anyway when my daughter insists on playing “Cruel Summer” for the 100th time.

I digress. Taylor is not Tracy. That is for sure.

I’d briefly caught wind of whatever ginned up controversy had bubbled to the surface in mid-2023 over the Combs version of “Fast Car.” As his tribute climbed to the top of the country charts some people were big mad because . . . Chapman never made the country charts? Who fucking knows. She’s not a country singer so I don’t know why she’d have ever been on the country charts. She did, however, perform at Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday party (ha), and rise to the top of the Billboard Charts and win a Grammy. So it’s not like Chapman went unnoticed back in the day.

Anyway, a bunch of people were mad. The Washington Post’s Emily Yahr was egging them on with lines like these:

. . . it has also prompted a wave of complicated feelings among some listeners and in the Nashville music community. Although many are thrilled to see “Fast Car” back in the spotlight and a new generation discovering Chapman’s work, it’s clouded by the fact that, as a Black queer woman, Chapman, 59, would have almost zero chance of that achievement herself in country music.

Mad. Because. He was at the top of the country charts — a white guy. Profiting off of a black, queer woman’s genius. She was profiting too, of course. No matter. Mad. Mad. Mad.

Ok so then she performs with him last night. Two people. Singing. They don’t address the dumb controversy. They just sing. A 33-year-old white guy country singer from North Carolina and a 59-year-old black lesbian from Ohio who possibly now lives in San Francisco though no one is too sure.

Combs looks at Chapman repeatedly throughout the performance like he can’t believe he gets to do this. He looks at her with such awe and admiration. She is perfect. Graceful. Calm. Elegant.

Genius.

It’s just the song. And them. And their gratitude for getting to have this moment. For him, to play a song he loves and re-made famous with the woman who wrote it and first sang it 36 years ago. She, because — I don’t really know but maybe because she’s grateful that he loved the song so much he wanted to play it and make it his own. Which is impossible because it is hers. But he did his damnedest and people loved it. And now a whole new generation has been exposed to this perfect song and they love it too.

Chapman and Combs stood there and sang together and it reminded me of how themes of love and hope and loss and being young and having your whole life ahead of you are ideas and feelings that are transcendent and unifying. It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t poor growing up, that my mom didn’t leave us and my dad didn’t drink too much. None of that mattered. That song connected me to other people. It made us all cry. It ripped all of our hearts out. Me, my closeted gay guy best friend from Oklahoma, my Indian lesbian roommate who wasn’t a lesbian yet. We all loved it.

I’m sure Combs’ childhood wasn’t just like Chapman’s. And he’s white and a man and not LGTBQ and not a lot of things that Chapman is. But it doesn’t matter. And that is why the song is perfect. And why their performance was perfect.

And I’m annoyed that in all the ink spewed on this subject today no one is talking about how that performance reminded us that we — as humans — have more in common than we don’t. That our differences and heartaches unite us. That we cried and cheered and applauded and they got a raucous standing ovation because of THAT. Because we want to come together. We don’t want to hate each other and constantly harp on our differences and be mad and wage a war of grievance.

They sang and reminded us of that. And it was perfect.