So we’d listen to music, loud, and the car would cut through the dark. By the time she took me home every evening we’d have been together for hours and run out of things to say. I grew up in a semi-rural suburb outside a small Rust Belt city, and when she drove me home the road would get darker and darker, fewer street lights, more space between the houses. What I remember most clearly is how cinematic and true the song felt to me. In that high school way we mostly did nothing - watched South Park, invented weird projects for ourselves, read time-travel Viking romances next to the pool at her dad’s condo, drove around a lot. She was 18, had graduated, was about to go to college. ( Remembrance of Things Past reverie ahead!) So I was 14 years old when I first heard “Fast Car” in my friend Christina’s . . .
SE: Your mom was kind of hip, because MY mom, when she found a Tracy Chapman CD on my bedroom floor when I was fourteen, looked at the cover, sneered, and said, “No wonder you’re suicidal if you’ve been listening to this shit!” (And by “kind of hip” I think I mean “capable of giving healthy love”?)īut also, my mom was the implicated first time I heard Tracy Chapman, too. I couldn’t decide if I loved these songs or if they were just making me feel something, but I was positive they were sung by a boy. My mom was playing her CD on the massive boom box we kept in the kitchen to facilitate family dance parties. The first in a series on Lilith Fair artists and their evocative all-consuming everlasting meaning to our adult selves.ĪHP: The first time I heard Tracy Chapman I was in grade school. In a place where I can feel the beating of your heart.By Anne Helen Petersen and Simone Eastman I’ll return and fill that space in your heart. I always hold a place for you in my heart. To all the up and coming singers, study Tracy Chapman and how she conveys emotion without vocal gymnastics. TracyĬhapman’s voice doesn’t vary much more than half an octave in this song, but she is still able to convey more emotion than some of the soulless divas who sing several octaves and have various runs on every word. The light finger-picking backed by strings is such a great choice. The simplicity of the arrangement is also amazing.
Also, she is an incredibly talented singer. Tracy ChapmanĬhapman infuses so much meaning into each phrase.
What is amazing about this song is how simple it is, but how moving it is. What is “The Promise”? She promises her lover that if he/she thinks of her and holds a place for her in his/her heart she will return and they can be together again. This is a beautiful love song by Tracy Chapman.
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