When you write songs that deliver stories with undeniable truths that all people can understand, they keep growing, decade after decade, passed from one generation to another, extending far past their initial cool points. Then, they fall on younger ears who listen and thirst for direction in their burgeoning lives, connecting those generational cycles. Some cycles are good; others, not so much. “You can’t stop reality from being real” is a quote from Flavor Flav plucked out of the aural terrain of 1988. The same year, the self-titled debut album from Tracy Chapman, a singer/songwriter tour de force by a Black woman from Cleveland, Ohio—who in June of that same year would be on the roster as a performer for Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday—was unleashed to the world and took off. Some would say it’s still flying.
The album was reissued earlier this month via Rhino, mainly because Tracy was finding it hard to get it on vinyl herself, and goodness, the political structure from ’88 to now doesn’t seem that far of a stretch. We could use this reminder, like this week. For over half an hour, she’s your guide to mini tales about America and those who could neither find nor afford that—once again, a dream deferred. With the most minimal production value and musical arrangement, she presents a world full of black, brown, and grey hues, telling stories of yesteryear and those happening in the right now, about people, families, and disenfranchised communities, just sliding into the cracks and crevices of governmental paperwork, which in most cases never serves its true purpose: helping the helpless.
Yet the masterstroke of this debut album put out by a 24-year-old at the time (sheesh), is its applicable nature to be reinterpreted through so many prisms, genres, and cultures.
Initially, dancehall music immediately understood the tone of desolation, and numerous dancehall producers took several hits from the record and reworked them into absolute dancehall smashers.
As if Tracy Chapman herself came from Kingston, Jamaica.
As it turns out, 30 some odd years later, the country music world, spearheaded by Luke Combs, came to embrace these stories of struggle; the realities of cyclical poverty struck a chord so hard with country music that Combs’ version of “Fast Car” won Chapman the Country Music Association Award for Song of the Year in 2023, making her the first Black person to win the award. This is the thing with compelling art: it just keeps on finding ways to inspire and endure.
But, just to hit the rewind button, in ‘88, music fans, critics, radio, and the infamous MTV were waiting and checking for George Michael’s “Faith.” The Dirty Dancing soundtrack spent 11 non-consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 chart. Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, an album that is revered as one of the best of the year and decade, regardless of genre, was highly anticipated, while U2’s The Joshua Tree was riding a critical and commercial high.
But just like Nirvana’s Nevermind upending Michael Jackson from the top of the charts in 1992? Nobody, not even Tracy Chapman herself, foresaw the immediate success and long-range imprint (Valerie June, Brandi Carlile, Tori Amos, and yes, Luke Combs) of that album in 1988.
Just like iconic country music, Chapman’s folk-centric arrangements were little stories: vignettes. Front line accounts of hardships in a Reagan-Bush America; a bare-bones look into the lives of marginalized people who barely endured outside the “Let’s make America great again” slogan created by Reagan during his 1980 presidential campaign.
Her unforeseen ascension, which she was shocked about too, was based on her ability to tell stories that not everyone knew about but could relate to. Honing those skills by busking in the train stations of Boston while attending Tufts University—I had friends who attended Boston University and Emerson and they recall seeing her too—Chapman was part of a wave of folk and blues-adjacent artists in the mid to late ’80s who found fame either through MTV or, indirectly, via a Reagan/Bush regime that made hearing unrepresented voices in America a necessity.
She would perform at coffeehouses and showcases sponsored by women’s groups or other politically affiliated organizations during that furtive Boston era. Immediately after the album was released, it had a dual-hit type of response. Suddenly, certain demographics of America were looking back at their late ’60s tie-dye politics while observing how most Americans, amidst an AIDS and crack epidemic that the White House mostly refused to acknowledge, found that Reaganomics allowed some middle-class folks to drive Ford Escorts and Toyota Corollas. At the same time, by increasing defense spending and reducing government regulation, the once-liberal youth instigators wondered how a shiny BMW E30 M3 was now parked in their adult driveway.
Younger folks, rock heads, hip-hop nation (Chapman was parodied on In Living Color which meant she’d very easily cut through the noise and was co-signed on the most controversial Black sketch show of the moment; she was the culture) alike heard Chapman, similar to the way Jann Wenner only heard Dylan, Jagger, and McCartney. “Fast Car,” Chapman’s renowned lead hit, resonated across many boundaries, propelling her debut album to the top of the Billboard charts and earning Chapman three Grammy nods.
But I always forget it’s the opening track, “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution,” that boils down all the major ’80s political wrangling to the most basic common denominator: Wall Street stole from us, and there should be blood in the streets. Chapman advises the action “like a whisper.” But it’s a much larger issue, and its relevance speaks to right now in 2025.
Her experience at the Wooster School in Connecticut, where wealthy white kids from legacy families could not even conceive where Chapman, this brilliant Black child, came from, and why they allowed her in on scholarship. She tells during an interview from 1986 that those experiences gave birth to “Talking Bout A Revolution,” so those lines, “Poor people gonna rise up/And get their share/ Poor people gonna rise up/And take what’s theirs,” are an inside baseball account from the disenfranchised getting a seat at the table and writing an real time foul stench reality. Which some/most POCs would call a Tuesday in America, unfortunately.
However, it’s the duo of “Fast Car” and “Baby Can I Hold You” that produced a slew of reggae dancehall reinterpretations, illustrating that stories about terrible situations in bad times appeal to those who feel and are affected. They were the “Murder She Wrote” jams before “Murder She Wrote” became a smash in the dancehall. If you were in a reggae club and those Tracy Chapman covers came on, you had to hold tight, real tight, to your gal because those cuts had magical powers. Country music, just like reggae, has been repurposing songs with great stories forever. You can tweak a musical arrangement if the story speaks universally.
Treble is supported by its patrons. Become a member of our Patreon, get access to subscriber benefits, and help an independent media outlet continue delivering articles like these.
