"Fast Car" is doing great things for Luke Combs - and its writer and original performer, Tracy Chapman. So what does Chapman think of the song's renaissance? Luke has no idea.
Luke admitted in a recent interview on Grady Smith's YouTube channel that he hasn't yet spoken to the pop singer about the song - not even when he was considering cutting it for his latest album. "For a cover you don’t have to seek approval, no. But it’s very specific what you can and can’t do. There are licenses for a lot of things. I can’t make any videos. Just can’t do a music video. I couldn’t promo that before the album came out. I couldn’t be like, ‘It’s going to have ‘Fast Car’ on it and it’s gonna be sick.’"
In a separate interview, Luke answered a question on many people's minds: why didn't you change the lyric "I work in a market as a check-out girl" - being that you're a guy? "You want to just be mega respectful of the original song," Luke said. "That’s why in that song, it’s, ‘work in the market as a checkout girl.’ I didn’t change that in my version. I really wanted to just do the original version of the song…"
Another cool note about the song's success: now that the song has hit #1 on the country charts, it marks the first time in music history that a song, solely written by a Black woman, has hit #1 on the country charts. Only a few Black women have ever scored writing credits on a #1 country hit; Alice Randall co-wrote Trisha Yearwood's 1994 hit "XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl)." Ester Dean co-wrote Lady A's "Champagne Night," which hit #1 in 2020, and Tayla Parx co-wrote Dan + Shay's 2021 #1 hit, "Glad You Exist." Congratulations to Tracy Chapman - and Luke Combs.
Source: WhiskeyRiff