The first time I heard Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” was the summer of 2002. I was riding in the passenger seat of my first love’s car, windows rolled down, driving along back roads in Southern Georgia. I was 18 and had just moved to the south to chase the fantasy of love. They were the first butch who said “I love you” to me.
As a runaway queer kid, discovering queer folk music was the balm I needed to soothe all the ragged wounds left from being disowned by the communities that had raised me. Country music was too painful, a memory of where I was from, but queer folk music fed me.
Tracy Chapman was the first Black woman to win Country Music Song of the Year from the Country Music Association in 2023. While we can (and absolutely should) problematize why it took until 2023 for that to happen, it’s undeniable how significant it was to see a Black queer woman taking that top award. Growing up listening to country music in the 90s, there was practically zero diversity. As a queer kid, it never occurred to me there would ever be an out musician performing at the CMAs, let alone a queer cishet man covering her song at the 2024 Grammys.
The first time I heard Luke Combs’ version of “Fast Car,” I turned the volume up. I immediately recognized those iconic opening chords, but it took me a moment to realize the “best of the 80s, 90s, and today” station wasn’t playing Tracy Chapman. I was into it. I didn’t think it was better or a replacement for the Tracy Chapman classic, but it was different and I loved the solid country twang. I especially adored how Luke Combs remained faithful to the original “worked at the market as a checkout girl” lyric. There was something almost queerly subversive about him leaving that line intact in the song. Every time it came on the radio, I turned up the volume and let it loudly echo through my car.
Queer folks freaked out about everything happening during the Grammys last weekend: Joni Mitchell with Brandi Carlile, Taylor Swift announcing her new album. But nothing titillated the queer community as much as Tracy Chapman’s performance of “Fast Car” with Luke Combs. When Tracy Chapman started strumming, I started crying, and it turns out I wasn’t alone.
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Across the internet, the collective response from queer people older than me, my age, younger than me– doesn’t matter what age – was that all of us had tears flowing. In the days that have followed, I’ve returned to that performance again and again watching the video and am just as mesmerized as I was that Sunday night. Their duet opens with Tracy Chapman’s coy smile– it seems she was quietly chuffed by her old song getting a new life. Watching the two of them perform together felt like witnessing a sacred intimacy. They sang in matching jeans and black button-downs, trading verses. As Chapman sang, Combs silently mouthed along, looking at her with complete awe and wonder. At the end of the song, Luke Combs bowed to Tracy Chapman giving her all the deserved credit. To see a young, straight, white male country singer so clearly humbled and having such reverence for an older Black, queer woman is a powerful image in our current cultural climate. Honestly, it’s something I never imagined I would see in my lifetime.
There is a lot to be scared about in the world today, many things going wrong, but there is hope too.
We all seem to have fallen back in love with “Fast Car” as Tracy Chapman’s original is now topping charts, 36 years after its release. It’s been a long, long time since I was that closeted queer kid listening to country radio, or that eighteen-year-old recent runaway in the passenger seat of a car flying down Georgia backroads thinking I knew what love was as Tracy Chapman sang. I’m a lot older now, but that song will always remind me of what it felt like to be young, terrified, and most of all, hopeful. This performance was not only the highlight of the Grammys but also made the world feel just a little bit brighter. We are living in difficult times, all of us are searching for connection, and belonging. Of course, a Grammy performance can’t right the wrongs or injustices of our world, but for five minutes and twenty-four seconds, we collectively remembered, and looked toward the future. A lot of us felt a little less alone.
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