Tracy Chapman To Perform At Grammys With Country Music Guy Who Covered Her Song “Fast Car”
The country music guy is named Luke Combs, and his cover version of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” is a soulless and boring rendition (it’s embedded above, if you feel like falling asleep), stripped of all the heart and meaning of Chapman’s very personal original work. But, Chapman is the sole owner of the song and its publishing rights, which means she made over $500,000 when it was at the top of the charts for Combs last summer, and she’s probably made even more from it by now. So, Combs has ultimately served a good purpose, and it’s great to see Chapman being celebrated again after being out of the public eye for so long. She’ll be returning to the Grammys this weekend to sing the song one more time in a duet with Combs. Via Variety:
Tracy Chapman, who has not performed in public in years, will return into the spotlight to perform a duet of “Fast Car” with Luke Combs at the Grammys on Sunday night, sources tell Variety.
Combs, who had a massive hit with his cover version of “Fast Car” last year, was already announced as a performer on the show. Chapman’s appearance comes as a significant surprise, as she has only performed for the cameras three times since wrapping up her last tour in 2009, and the singer had thus far resisted the popular demand to take advantage of the resurgence of “Fast Car” as an international phenomenon.
[Variety]
The Grammys are probably the most worthless and rigged award show in all of entertainment (it’s a toss up between Grammys, Emmys, and Golden Globes), but I’ll watch to see Tracy Chapman, and I’ll be rooting for Lana Del Rey. Of course, the Grammys already humiliated themselves and slid further into complete irrelevance when they didn’t award Del Rey’s “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” (one of the top 10 albums this century) in 2020, so I expect them to fail again and not give anything to “…Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” but we’ll see.
Here was Tracy Chapman winning the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Female in 1989 for “Fast Car” (she also won Best Folk Album and Best New Artist):
Side note: That lineup of five solid nominees is insane! Any one of them could’ve won and it would’ve been deserved. Today, there’s barely even two worthy noms in most of the Grammys categories.
