Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs perform during the 66th GRAMMY Awards on Feb. 4, 2024, in Los Angeles. This year’s annual Grammy Awards began on a profound note of hope, as the beaming, grey-haired and youthful looking folk icon Tracy Chapman opened the show duetting with country singer Luke Combs on her celebrated 1988 hit song, “Fast Car.
Even more problematic are the different ways some have taken to social media to erase Chapman’s differences of race, gender and sexual orientation—insisting on her “universality”—or even to reinterpret her incredibly bleak song as one of “hope” during a bygone era.
It’s more than gratifying to see Chapman aging like fine wine with her flawless and glowing skin as she pushes 60, but her more mature presentation should not be weaponized against younger talent—especially those whose hypersexual personas afford them a visibility that has long been denied to artists like Chapman, who must work twice as hard when performing outside these gendered boxes, regardless of their obvious talent.
Black women artists are still moving the needle in our culture and doing so in a flex for sexual freedom.This was most lyrically presented in the songs. The timeless “Fast Car” presents Chapman as a sharp storyteller narrating what she once claimed was theand their dashed hopes—even as the song has been claimed as a “lesbian anthem,” despite the heterosexual couple that is centered .
Do these songs depict the shift in women’s status over the decades? We may have come a long way from passively waiting for someone else’s “fast car” to move us out of poverty—and failing to doing so—while the latest songs imagine us killing our exes or shimmering like diamonds once we move on.
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