For more than 30 years an unimprovable joke from classic-era Simpsons has defined the relative insignificance of the Grammy Awards. Disillusioned by the pressures of fame, Homer, briefly in a successful barbershop quartet, hands his gong to a hotel bellboy. “Hey, an awards statue!” the lad says before becoming immediately disappointed. “Aww! It’s a Grammy.” He flings the prize over the balcony, only for it come windmilling back and clunk Homer on the head. “Hey, don’t throw your garbage down here!” a disembodied voice yells.
The awards themselves have always been a bit of an embarrassment – still honouring Frank Sinatra and Herb Alpert in 1967 – but people have finally started paying attention to the ceremony. Just look at the stories generated after last weekend’s bash. Jay-Z gave out about Beyoncé, his missus, winning more Grammys than anyone else without ever picking up best album. Some people who weren’t me – honest, I swear to God! – risked enraging the Swift Universe by suggesting Taylor was insufficiently respectful to Celine Dion when accepting a prize. Miley Cyrus won deserved plaudits for sporting the best big hair this side of the Reagan administration.
The busiest hubbub, however, gathered around a welcome unearthing of Tracy Chapman’s immortal Fast Car. Mighty applause greeted her performance with the country singer Luke Combs. Chapman’s original shot to No 1 in the iTunes charts. She began trending. Then ... wait ... what is that I hear trundling over the horizon? This is not a drill! It’s the takes! It’s the takes! Thousands and thousands of takes and they’re more deranged than ever! Take shelter!
There was a little bit of this when Combs – markedly respectful to Chapman last weekend – had a hit with his cover version last year. The song went on to be named song of the year at the Country Music Awards, thus making Chapman the first black woman to win that award. There was some effort to generate confusion at a folky melody being claimed for country, but few were buying that. It took the Grammy performance to properly wake the herd.
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None of this matters. But it does offer an interesting illustration of how discourse now works. Every blowhard with a fizzy opinion takes the opportunity to offload on the cultural phenomenon caught briefly in the online headlights. In a twitch the emanation is gone and we move on to something else.
Writing for CNN, Allison Hope, referencing Combs’s version, felt this “the first fair moment since the single released last year”. The headline claimed “Chapman finally gets the standing ovation she deserves”. It is true that black talent gets a hard deal from country music, but the piece failed to clarify what was unfair about Combs’s success. It was apparently wrong that he shot to fame covering a song created by “a Black woman and a queer icon”. Why, exactly? As a writer, Chapman will have received significant royalties from the 2023 version. “I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honoured to be there,” she told Billboard magazine in July.
And what of this withheld standing ovation? Released in 1988, Fast Car, a still-haunting tale of a working-class woman trapped in poverty, won one of three Grammys for which it was nominated and was unavoidable for years after. Chapman’s self-titled debut album sold a colossal 20 million copies. She was a phenomenon of the age. Yet a repeated argument online suggested she had, last weekend, finally been dragged from undeserved obscurity.
The author Luke Epplin felt that three lines from the song “convey more meaning than entire novels sometimes do”. If you say so
“Disappointed that a white male was needed to validate her,” someone on TwXtter wrote. “She won a Grammy but she did not receive her due in her time.” Who thinks she needs a white man to validate her? The bloke was there because the Grammys were celebrating 2023 and he’d just had a hit with the tune.
There was a lot more where that came from.
Elsewhere, the reintroduction of the tune sent supporters into uncontrolled hyperbole. “I think Fast Car is probably the greatest song ever written in English,” the popular podcaster Ryan Broderick told us. I am as big a fan of Chapman’s tune as anyone else in the room, but the best in a millennium of English-language song? I think Ernie (the Fastest Milkman in the West) would have something to say about that. The author Luke Epplin felt that three lines from the song “convey more meaning than entire novels sometimes do”. If you say so.
And then, before you have time to take it in, the “discourse” moves on to something else. Freak weather. A cat on a tricycle. Made-up stuff about the next James Bond. Fast Car is left to return to a long life of steady, unfrenzied admiration. As it approaches middle age, it deserves that much peace.
