Tracy Chapman’s Grammy performance of her song “Fast Car” with country musician Luke Combs, who recently recorded it, was one of those moments from Sunday’s awards show that seemed to have everybody talking. And listening. Chapman’s 1988 studio version of the song shot up to No. 1 on iTunes, as did “Tracy Chapman,” her debut album, on which “Fast Car” appears. The music video topped iTunes’ music video charts this week.
What made the performance so captivating? Why did Chapman stop the world in its tracks?
There have since been numerous posts and articles on the musician, who, paradoxically, is being treated as an industry veteran and like some newly discovered act. What made the performance so captivating? Why did Chapman stop the world in its tracks?
In short, her performance appeared to be the first time Chapman, who has, for decades, been embraced by the lesbian community, was fully received by the world. It should be noted that the notoriously private musician, a Black woman with radical politics, has never discussed her sexuality or her love life. But to her fans, she has long embodied queerness and manifested a kind of liberation the world was not ready for.
And the profundity of her being so well received Sunday was not lost on queer people, especially queer people of color, such as me, who have watched Black and brown people who present themselves as Chapman does be systematically sidelined because their very existence challenges prevailing ideologies, like cishet patriarchy and white supremacy.
Chapman, who rose to popularity in the 1980s, was in many ways an improbable music star. Though she found commercial success, she also spent much of her career skirting the periphery of the industry, never gaining the kind of mainstream recognition she deserved.
Part of the allure around her Grammys performance can be attributed to the increasingly reclusive life she’s lived since 2009. That’s when she toured for a studio album she released in…
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