Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
1988
Tracy Chapman strikes me as a realist, which I can appreciate. This, despite the first song singing literally about the masses rising up and starting a revolution. Yes, it currently sounds "like a whisper," but the assumption is that the whisper will eventually grow into a shout. The first 25 times I heard "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution," I thought "a whisper" was "abysmal," which, in my mind, would've been more in line with the rest of the stories on this album. Not that Chapman would ever literally call revolution "abysmal," but more, like, it's tough to talk about revolution when you're on the welfare line. Because that's how the Man wants it! He wants you distracted with your own personal problems so that you don't have the time or the energy to rise up and take back from Him what's actually yours.
Because, see, the rest of the songs are all about people down on their luck, doing their fucking best under dire circumstances. The big hit—the reason we're all here, folks, let's be real—is "Fast Car," and it's about taking one step forward and two steps back each time an attempt at improving one's life is made, because it's tough out there, there are cycles of poverty, etc. etc. Relatable, for sure. Probably the opposite end of any "revolution" talk, and, to my mind, more real.
The song after that, "Across the Lines," speaks to the racial divide in our society, how black children are brutalized without much of an outcry but one white kid is blinded and the whole world goes nuts. And on "Behind the Wall," how the police are pretty slow to respond to cries for help in "bad" neighborhoods. On a tangential subject, "Mountains o' Things" is about society's greed, and how we equate value with "stuff," instead of what is actually important. "If Not Now..." dares to ask the question at the end of that ellipsis: "...when?" When will we start to address the reality of the situation, instead of gritting and bearing it? When I say that Tracy Chapman is a "realist," I'm saying that she's not really providing answers, or pretending to. She's just presenting the situation as it is, in horrifying clarity.
Here's a reality: "Fast Car" is a popular song. It peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in '88. It was popular enough when I was young that I was already able to hum along when I heard it this week. Here's another reality: "Fast Car" was recently covered by a well-intentioned Luke Combs. I don't think it's necessarily concerning that Combs' version peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 (i.e. four spots higher than the original), and I don't think it's baffling that the song could make the easy transition onto country radio. All the shit I typed about above, all those themes were country music's original bread and butter. These issues were class issues before white supremacy jostled it enough so that racial issues were split along parallel faults. I'm actually really proud that Tracy Chapman was the first Black woman to (solo) write a #1 Billboard Country song, and the first Black woman ever to win a CMA award. Sure, maybe I take issue with the fact that Combs' version sounds almost exactly the same, and does nothing new with it, but at the same time, it's a great fucking song, and so what.
I mean, it feels like Tracy Chapman would be the first person to tell you that the success of Tracy Chapman does not mean that things are changing. The revolution is not here. It's still a whisper. Chapman was discovered by freak coincidence, heard by the son of a record executive while playing at Tufts, that son being so convinced that Chapman was a star that he badgered his dad until she ended up in the studio. And after building a following and releasing a half dozen critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums, her biggest success comes when some white dude covers her most popular song. I know that's reductive, and I just spent a whole paragraph fighting against the reductivism, but still. I'm just saying that Tracy Chapman is a real one, and nothing about her unreal story makes what she's singing about any less real. She is the exception, and one that I now cherish.
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