Tracy Chapman has seen a meteoric rise in streams of her song “Fast Car” in the days following her appearance at the 2024 Grammy Awards.
According to Billboard, “Fast Car” has experienced a 241% increase in streams from (248,000 daily streams to 949,000) and a 38,000% (!) increase in sales (from a negligible amount to nearly 14,000 purchases).
“Fast Car” initially experienced renewed interest last year when Luke Combs covered the song. The cover peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, surpassing the original song’s peak position at No. 6 in 1988. The cover’s success on the country music charts made Tracy Chapman the first Black woman to have the sole songwriting credit on a No.1 country hit.
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At last weekend’s Grammys, Chapman made a rare public appearance to perform “Fast Car” with Combs. The performance went quickly viral, fueling even more interest in both Combs’ cover as well as Chapman’s original.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Grammys producer Ben Winston said Chapman’s performance was months in making. “Five months ago, [exec producers] Raj Kapoor and Patrick Menton said, ‘Look, there might be interest from Tracy.’ And they worked really closely alongside that camp to make sure it happened, to make sure she felt good about it. She brings this joyful, amazing energy, this calmness to the set. And it happened. We sometimes thought it was too good to be true when she had agreed to do it.”
Tracy Chapman, who has not performed in public in years, performs “Fast Car” with Luke Combs at the #Grammys: pic.twitter.com/VJg3knUYuV
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) February 5, 2024