This is an excerpt from Outtakes, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Renée Graham. Sign up to get this in your inbox a day early.
Tracy Chapman is now the first Black woman to have a solo songwriting credit on a chart-topping country hit.
Covered by Luke Combs, “Fast Car” rocketed to number one on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. Chapman wrote the song when she was a Tufts University student and a budding singer-songwriter playing in local bars and cafes. Back in 1988 — yes, it’s been that long — “Fast Car” became her breakthrough hit, the first single from her eponymous debut. It reached No. 6 on the Billboard singles chart, and Chapman won Grammys for best new artist, best female pop vocal performance, and best contemporary folk performance.
Twice chosen as the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year, Combs told Music Mayhem magazine that “Fast Car” was his “first favorite song probably ever.” Decades later, he began posting his version on social media, and it’s featured on his latest album, “Gettin’ Old.”
Combs sticks close to the source material, but Chapman’s original is hauntingly indelible. In the late 1980s when MTV was saturated with Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, and Poison, “Fast Car” stayed in steady rotation. With a spare arrangement anchored by Chapman’s acoustic guitar, her voice is as hushed as a prayer as she sings about the desperation of trying to escape a dead-end life:
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
In a 2010 interview with BBC World Service, Chapman said she wrote the song to evoke “the world as I saw it when I was growing up in Cleveland, Ohio,” where, as the child of a single mother, she witnessed “a community of people who were struggling” and “hoping that things would get better.”
Because the music industry is terrible, Combs did not need Chapman’s prior approval to record “Fast Car.” (He’s covered by a compulsory license, “a statutorily created license that allows the use of copyrighted materials without the explicit permission of the copyright owner.”) Of course, she will get royalties. And it would be great to see Chapman, who keeps a low public profile, on stage with Combs if he performs the song at the CMAs later this year. Let this also be a gateway for those who’ve recently discovered Chapman to delve into her whole, varied catalog.
Over the decades, “Fast Car” has been covered by a range of artists, including Sam Smith, Justin Bieber, and Khalid. Listen to the song today, and you’ll hear the plaintive cry of a young trans person trying to leave a state infested with codified hate; a woman forced to travel far from home to make the best decisions for her life and body; or a teacher pushed out of a beloved career for sharing with her students a book arbitrarily deemed inappropriate.
Circumstances change, and the sentiments of that 35-year-old hit remain unbound to a single generation. That’s why it’s become relevant and resonant to a new group of listeners — the great songs always are. But perhaps more than anything, Chapman’s signature tune endures because in our own lives, we’ve all had that yearning for a fast car, that ticket to somewhere, anywhere better.
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com.