Fast: Fast Car

Tracy Chapman: Fast Car
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This is my third piece in a row focusing on a Black woman. I’m not sure why, but I realized the other day that my wife and I have, over the past few months, watched five movies/TV shows (it is hard to tell the difference these days) about legendary Black women singers—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Aretha, The United States Against Billie Holliday, Tina, and Mahalia. (Plus One Night in Miami, in which one of the main characters is a Black male singer). How much of the fact that so many fine films featuring mostly Black casts is a result of the agitation about the whiteness of the Oscars? And how much did the fallout from the George Floyd killing, and the other killings of Black Americans over the past year, convince studios to release, and people like me to watch, films like this? 

So, once again, I’ve forced potential readers to wade through a paragraph that is, basically, unrelated to the song I’ve chosen to discuss. Maybe that’s why I write these things for fun and not money (not that anyone’s offering), because it allows me to go off on tangents. Like I just did there, again. 

But let’s get to the meat of the topic. Tracy Chapman’s 1988 song “Fast Car,” from her self-titled debut album is an amazing song on so many levels. It is so good, in fact, that one writer declared that it “essentially revived the singer-songwriter movement.” I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it didn’t hurt—and the fact that Chapman was Black, which was unusual in a genre that had become pretty white by that point, was another reason that the song was noticed. 

The song also has a great “discovery” story. Shortly after her debut album was released, Chapman was part of a megastar-studded bill for the Nelson Mandela Birthday Concert in 1988 at Wembley Stadium. She had completed a three-song set and cleverly stuck around. When Stevie Wonder went to perform, he discovered that the hard disk for his Synclavier was missing, and he walked off the stage in tears (he did, eventually, return using borrowed equipment). Chapman was asked to go again, and she agreed, doing two songs, including “Fast Car.” It went over big. 

But the real reason that the song became a hit (No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100), and got a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (and another for Chapman as Best New Artist and the album for Best Contemporary Folk Album) and MTV Video Music Award nominations, is that it is an incredible piece of songwriting, delivered brilliantly by Chapman in her rich contralto voice. 

“Fast Car” is, however, a pretty depressing song. The first stanza describes the singer’s desperation: 

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero, got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove 

We learn why she wants out in the next few stanzas—she’s working at a convenience store, had to drop out of school to care for her alcoholic father after her mother left him. But it’s not only the car—it’s the owner, who when they drove, made her feel like she belonged and could be someone. It’s a dream that dies all too quickly—she works, he stays out late, drinks and ignores their kids—and she sees no future. And in the last stanza, she lays it out: 

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way 

Anybody want to wager on whether or not they left?

Prison: Prisoners of Their Hairdos

Christine Lavin: Prisoners of Their Hairdos
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My recent run of television-related posts would suggest a discussion of The Prisoner, one of the great TV shows of the 1960s, and one of the first shows designed to blow the viewers’ minds, and I still might, but while it had a theme song (with a great credit sequence), it really wasn’t a music based show.

I’ve also recently written elsewhere about Jason Isbell’s cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak,” so that’s out. As I perused my music library, I came across this song, which I hadn’t listened to in years, and which reminded me that you don’t need to be in a cell to be a prisoner.

Christine Lavin has been on the folk scene since the 1980s, and while she has had a long, successful career as a singer-songwriter, she never had the sort of national breakout that some of her contemporaries like Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman or Shawn Colvin, although she is incredibly well respected in the folk music world. Lavin writes mostly about relationships, and while she can write seriously, she is probably best known for her sense of humor. Many of her songs are laugh out loud funny. I sometimes wonder if her lack of fame stems from the fact that women folk singers are stereotypically supposed to be sad, tortured souls, and Lavin’s humor prevents her from being taken seriously. But that’s really too bad, because she has consistently written and performed great songs, not all of which are jokey.

In addition, she has long been an incredible supporter of other musicians, playing them on the radio, and working with them. I remember listening to her as the first host of WFUV’s Sunday Breakfast, playing music by artists she liked, sometimes even unreleased tracks. Even after friend (and fellow former WPRB Program Director John Platt) took over the show, Lavin would send him music to play, and she occasionally would sub for him. As much as I loved listening to John, which I don’t get to do as much since the station, in a bad move, pushed him to Sunday evening, when sports, TV, life and dinner usually take precedence (sorry!), it was fun to hear Lavin’s unique style every once in a while.

“Prisoners of Their Hairdos” is on the funny side of Lavin’s musical spectrum, and points out that some people’s coiffures are so distinctive that:

If they changed the way they combed their hair 
They'd never be recognized anywhere 
They're prisoners 

Lavin lists Crystal Gayle, Dorothy Hamill, Don King, Lyle Lovett, Gloria Steinem, Stevie Nicks Leon Redbone, Pee Wee Herman, Tom Wolfe, Pope John Paul, Ted Koppel, and Mary Travers as hairdo prisoners, and I’m sure we could think of more recent ones, since the song was released in 1991. An amateur golfer/more amateur president comes to mind…..

The song points out that ZZ Top are, similarly, prisoners of their beards, and Dolly Parton is a prisoner of her…….wigs. But, on the other hand, the B-52’s beehives, she suggests, are prisoners of the band.

There was a time where I had a great deal of hair, but time and genetics has rendered me almost bald, and now I keep my hair short, for ease of care. Typically, when I go to the barber, she asks me, “what do you want to do?” And my response is usually, “there really isn’t much you can do.” My daughter’s father-in-law (English really needs a word like machatenester or consuegro) shaves his head daily, and has tried to convince me to do the same. I’ve declined, because I don’t want to become a prisoner of my baldness.

Jail: For My Lover

Tracy Chapman: For My Lover

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There are many songs which make extravagant, even obsessive, declarations of love. Tracy Chapman’s For My Lover is the only one I know of where the singer is willing to go to jail for him. In a 1988 interview in Rolling Stone, Chapman made a connection between this song and Mountains of Things. She explained it this way:

One thing that really concerns me is a sense of balance. You know, when you’re talking about material things, it’s where those things fit into your life. Then, with relationships, too, how do you position yourself in relation to other people ? It’s a fine line sometimes, trying to hold on to yourself and your own identity and either being lured into having other people define them for you or having the things around you define them for you.

Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse: Behind the Wall

Tracy Chapman: Behind the Wall

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I thought a good follow up to Suzanne Vega's "Luka" would be to post Tracy Chapman's "Behind the Wall". I wasn't able to find any internet confirmation, but I was always told that this song was Tracy's response to "Luka". The song is a haunting a cappella song from the perspective of Luka's neighbor, to whom Luka is speaking in Vega's song.

Like in the song, in reality, many outsiders feel helpless to do anything when confronted with domestic abuse around them. We are either silenced by social rules that tell us to stay out of other people's affairs, or we reach out only to find our attempts fail because the powers that be are unwilling or unable to step in.

Peace on Earth: A Matter of Faith

Susan Werner: Together

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On her album The Gospel Truth, Susan Werner wrestles with the question of religion. Much of the album is angry or bitter. The songs detail the hypocrisy of those preach hatred in the name of God, politicians who use religion to justify their wrong-headed policies, and also tell of Werner’s struggles with her own religious upbringing. But these struggles, and this venting, are not the last word. Werner concludes the album the song “Together”. Although the lyrics include the words, “if there is a God”, the song is nonetheless a prayer for tolerance. Coming at the end of this tumultuous album, it represents Werner’s reconciliation with her feelings about faith; she renounces the trappings of faith as she originally encountered them, but she holds to the moral values that her faith embodies.

Tracy Chapman: Heaven‘s Here on Earth

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By contrast, Tracy Chapman’s songs have never revealed any doubts about her faith. She has detailed many personal struggles, as well as political actions, in her work, but these have always seemed like spiritual statements. “Heaven’s Here On Earth” makes this explicit. Chapman makes it clear that she does not wait for the Lord to provide a better life in the next world; rather, she believes that God expects us to make this world the best it can be for all who live upon it while we are here.

I do not presume in this post to offer any judgment as to how anyone should conduct their spiritual life. I merely wish to present the contrasting views on the matter of two artists I greatly admire. It is for each of us to decide which path is the one we will walk, (perhaps, none of the above). But it does seem to me that each of these songs is, in its own way, a prayer for peace.

Advice: House of the Rising Sun

The Animals: House of the Rising Sun [purchase]

Probably the best known version of this classic song...although the earliest known recording dates from 1933.

And here are a few versions from the gals:

The Be Good Tanyas: House of the Rising Sun [purchase]

Tracy Chapman: House of the Rising Sun [purchase]

N.B. Essentially not available, seeing as the CD it is from is selling here, used, for £294.36 (close to $600)!

Nina Simone: House of the Rising Sun [purchase]


Variously a song about a life gone to ruin through gambling or prostitution, this is one that has been covered by all and sundry.

"There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one...

Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun."

Read more about House of the Rising Sun over at Wikipedia...there's a surprising amount to learn!