Before seminary, I was in the music business. I don’t miss it for a second. I remember how inescapable Fast Car was, but I never new Tracy was gay. However, the narrative of “hard for the gays in music” from the piece you quoted is just stupid. Lilith Fair? Elton John, you know, one of the biggest sellers of all time? Queen? Even Judas Priest! Ugh.
As Camille Paglia has noted, no one mentioned homosexuality before the late 1960s, except when necessary, and then via euphemisms mostly. It’s not that the idea was unknown, but it just wasn’t the first thing many people thought of when they saw two adult men living together as roommates. Or when a flamboyant performer happened on the scene.
Ellen Corby was a lesbian and Wil Geer was bisexual so might as well be homosexual. A few of the actors in Andy Griffith were homosexual, most famously Gomer Pyle.
As a matter of fact, I saw Judas Priest in the mid 80's and we were in the 3rd row, front. One of my friends is convinced that Rob was giving him "the eye"......LOL.
We know Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and Rob Halford are gay now. All were obliged to conceal their sexuality through the ‘70s and ‘80s (although Elton John said he was bisexual in the ‘70s). All of them waited until long after their careers were well established.
Would they have had the careers they did if they’d been out since the beginning? They (and the rest of the music industry) certainly didn’t seem to think so.
I was 4 when this came out, living in Northern Ireland. No idea when I first would’ve heard it but it’s a classic song. I honestly had no idea the song was written and performed by a black woman. It doesn’t sound like I have no idea why it matters - it certainly didn’t stop me enjoying it and belting out the chorus when it came on the radio.
Music is covered by loads of different artists in different styles all the time. I am not a fan of rap music but I’ll quite happily admit that Run DMC’s version of Walk this way is better than Aerosmith’s original.
The left’s obsession with race and sexuality is exhausting. Why does it matter who sings a song? Let music be music. I want to hear baritone southern drawls singing country music and I want big brassy Motown singers. I want fiddles and bodhrans and I want bluesy electric guitars. My world would be a lot poorer if I was restricted to music that came solely from my culture. Why do they want to stop people enjoying things like this? What’s the end game here?
The endgame for the professional racialists spawned by Left academia is to set themselves up as Official Spokesthey/thems of their supposed "community", so that anytime their "community" is mentioned they get some piece of the action.
Think of it as part tollbooth collector and part Mafia extortion racket: "Nice business/career you have here, it would be a shame if it got destroyed because of your obvious complicity in upholding unjust power structures and causing harms to the marginalized."
Left academia is a "community" of sterile aspiring commissars, they cannot create but only "problematize", meaning isolate some target and batter it with moral bullying and emotional blackmail until they get a pound of flesh, whether that means forcing a groveling apology or just publishing a stupid article to get attention.
Leave Elvis out of this. He was extremely talented. This wasn't like taking a Little Richard song and putting out a mediocre white guy performance, it sort of went the other way around here. There are many others who could have been named instead, like Pat Boone (whose 90s album "In A Metal Mood" redeemed him, see YouTube for his hilarious self parody at an Easter Seals telethon).
Of course Elvis was extremely talented, but if you know anything about his history (read at least the first of Peter Guralnick's two-volume biography), you know that he made "race music" acceptable. There were some who heard Elvis on the radio at first and who called radio stations to complain that they were playing black music. It's not his fault that America was like that then. Elvis just liked that kind of music, and was good at it.
Ill have to read the book. I've known he's one of the guys who mainstreamed black music and isn't it a good thing he did? It can't be all Little Richard and Chuck Berry especially in that era.. Some Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis were needed. Come for Elvis.and eventually you might find yourself listening to Fats Domino. Speaking of that, I once saw Hank Williams Jr play. My mom got free tickets and I went to the show with her. I really only knew the football song from Hank's and I wasn't too impressed by all the classic Hank hits that were played. But when he moved to the piano and did an hour of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and all the rest it became one of the best concerts I've been to.
Yes, I think Elvis and the rest were great things! I can easily imagine why black roots musicians of the era felt shortchanged, but the fact is that this is what it took to mainstream black music in midcentury America. It would have been a far better world had that not been the case -- that is, had segregation not existed, and Big Mama Thornton and the others had been able to get on radio -- but that's not the world of mid-century America. What would people today have rather happened? That Elvis and the other white pioneers stayed in their lane, and played only country, or, God forbid, mayonnaisey late-period pop, with strings and stuff? The fact is, culture, and cultural development, is messy. It's why you can't simply will into existence Christian movies that are as good as the best of Hollywood.
Singers and musicians didn't make much money in the 50s as they do today. Presley was an outlier because he was managed well. Think about Buddy Holly. Died touring doing the small city tour in the upper MidWest. If not for Brian Epstein, the Beatles would have probably finished as a cover band in Liverpool. But Epstein's brilliance allowed Lennon and McCartney's brilliance to rise. The move to the LP and the gathering affluence in America, Britain and Europe helped a lot.
It's ironic that "Hound Dog" was written by two young Jewish guys, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were trolling black waters, hoping to come up with a hit.
Anyone who has read anything in depth about The Beatles knows that the early Lennon and McCartney were mildly obsessed with coming up with a song which would be picked up by one of the Motown girl groups. John Lennon said that "Tell Me Why," from "A Hard Day's Night," was as close as they could come, but none of the girl groups picked it up, which appears to have disappointed L&M. ( If you know that early 60s black girl group sound and can apply it to "Tell Me Why," you'll know what John Lennon was getting at. ) He also used to say that his sensational song, "You Can't Do That," was "me trying to do a Wilson Pickett bit."
Has that drip, Holly, ever heard of Charley Pride?
If you're a Fats Waller fan, almost certainly you own a copy of "Ain't Misbehavin'," the Broadway revue of Waller's songs which was a big hit in 1978. Could that show be done today? Most blacks have never heard of Fats Waller, let alone listen to his recordings. ( Some astute critic has pointed out that Fats Waller was as close to that black swan combination of a great musician and a great comic as we're ever likely to have. ) The vast majority of people who would be interested in attending a revival would be white, undoubtedly called out for implied racism by some assh*le like the WaPo reporter, because, you see, it could only be interpreted as an example of whiteys coming to hear the darkies perform for their amusement. The same is almost certainly true of Scott Joplin's opera, "Treemonisha."
I've never known much about Sr or Jr but I do know that when Jr gets on the piano and starts playing the 50s hits he grew up listening to he's pretty awesome.
My mom graduated HS in 1960 and was not into popular music, with one exception -- Little Richard. She liked his outlandish makeup and stage persona. I chuckle when I think of my mom and grandparents -- a typical post-war, working-class family -- watching Little Richard sing "Lucille" and "Tutti Frutti" on the Ed Sullivan Show.
I listened to a Hank Jr. Greatest Hits CD for the first time in a couple years. He's pretty bad. If he didn't use his father's name for fame, he'd be as great as Gary Lewis- son of Jerry.
Perhaps a more accurate description might be race mixed music. White Americans had been listening to black musicians for a long long time before Elvis.
Yep. It all comes together. Somewhere long ago I read that Hank Williams said he learned a lot from listening to "black" music, and I heard Charley Pride say one time he learned a lot listening to Hank Williams.
Was there really a time when there were no joyless, anal leftwingers leaving no nit unpicked, whose motto should have been "That's not funny!" I remember the type very well from my college days when the student newspaper was always ranting about some worthy cause or other- and the one time I agreed with it (about Ann Arbor's poor bus service) I wondered if maybe I was feverish.
The type has been around forever. Dickens satirized them in part with Mrs. Jellyby. England tried to export its load of them to Massachusetts in the 17th century, but obviously didn’t get them all in the boats. Nevertheless, here we are, afflicted with the mental descendants of those who did sail here.
Rod, I understand your complaint about how the song is being "problematized" and the LGBT stuff is getting thrown in for no good reason... and I totally agree with the larger point you are making but....
That Luke Combs version sucks. The Tracy Chapman version is iconic. No one should have covered that song - ever - and no one should have even tried to cover it. Some songs just belong to the original artist and this is one of them.
Remakes of songs (or movies!) do occasionally suck. No reason to politicize the suckage. If Combs did a poor job with this his race and sexuality are not the reason why.
Horseshit. Reinterpretation of iconic songs can oftentimes find new depths of meaning that the original artist might have missed themselves.
Best example of this is Johnny Cash doing such an amazing version of the Nine Inch Nail's hit "Hurt" that Trent Reznor says that it's a Johnny Cash song now.
It doesn't always work, of course. But even if it doesn't, the idea that an artist can't still be a fan of another artist and pay tribute to them by recording their own version of a song is somehow offensive to me.
You are right, Dukeboy. Some covers are better. I'd take The Beatles "Twist and Shout" over the Isley Brothers version. George Harrison is a superior guitar player and John Lennon lost his voice for a couple weeks after singing it in the studio. Jimi Hendrix's "Watchtower" is a very different take on Bob Dylan's version. Both versions are fine.
I forgot about that Johnny Cash remake. It was emotionally brutal and a revelation, especially coming near the end of Johnny's life. The video was him singing while old footage of his lost family played in the background. It was chilling and all too real.
I dunno- hadn’t heard it before this article came out and played the two versions back to back with my wife. They sound pretty similar but her opinion (not that it counts for much to anyone but me) was that Luke had the better voice. Though he doesn’t sound like a checkout girl to be fair.
But we can't, because: "American adults who identify as politically liberal have long reported lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being than conservatives, a trend that mental-health experts suspect is at least partly explained by liberals' tendency to spend more time worrying about stress-inducing topics like racial injustice, ..."
This eternally dour outlook gives us a piece lamenting the fact that... uh... (checks notes) Chapman becomes the first black queer woman artist to be the sole author of a #1 country song, which is certain to make her a boatload of money.
So....does liberalism make you neurotic, or does neurosis make you more apt to be liberal? Either way, I'm sure there's a symbiotic relationship involved. Some of the most joyless people I know are progressive millennials. For whatever reasons they seem to worry about *everything.*
Fast Car is a good song. I think Chapman wrote it and if she did she is deriving a monetary benefit from a successful cover. The idea that she’s being exploited by the country singer is absurd . She’s getting royalties. Now I knew nothing about Chapman .In that,I’m probably like most people. The emphasis that some of the writers place on her being gay is to put it mildly, questionable . Is Fast Car a gay song? Well Walk on the Wild Side, it’s not. The country singer is supposed to be so grateful to Black Gays that he’s now supposed to take a Black Gay act on the road with him?That doesn’t even make sense.Yes you do wonder how people come up with some of this nonsense. There is something very disturbing about this. It’s the desire on the part of some to set themselves up as cultural commissars who want to dictate not simply what we do but we think. Cultural product as these people might put it is to conform to and promote certain ideas and goals. Artists are to workers in service to what I guess you could call the revolution. That is their function.
I am of the same era as you Rod and I loved this song and listened to Tracy Chapman's album with Fast Car on repeat when I was in college. I loved the song even as it broke my heart. Listening to Luke Coombs cover just now (never heard it before), I was brought to tears because of the beauty of Tracy Chapman's words and music. The pain and longing she expresses is universal to all humans, even if someone finds that "problematic."
I wonder if the "liberals" are afraid of beauty and transcendence because they point us to God. Because Fast Car makes me think of our universal humanity and worthiness, the sacrifices we make, and the acts of mercy we must do for those around us. And that makes me want to head to the next Mass and worship!
I thought Tracy Chapman was a dude when this song first came out. I honestly thought that for years. I liked the song okay, but I was a metalhead, so I wasn't paying much attention to it or the artist at the time. I appreciate it more as a fully- formed adult.
I'm sure that I'm not the only casual listener who made the same mistake at the time.
Never much liked the song back then, and still don't, actually. Even though I like a lot of folk music this one just never appealed to me musically. Having said that, I think the Combs version is fine, and agree with Rod's larger point, that everything that wokeness touches turns to shit.
Which reminds me -- saw an amazing bumper sticker online yesterday that made me laugh out loud: "Help Save Pregnant Men From Climate Change Inequity!" Then in small print, "Visit I'llbelieveanythingtheyf--kingtellme.com for more info."
“Fast Car” is the perfect combination of hope and despair. That’s its universality. Leftists such as the killjoys you mention patronize those they decry as marginalized by demanding the cross-pollination of cultural genres and then turn around and berate against cultural appropriation. How do they avoid whiplash? It’s freaking exhausting.
If you believe that the cross-pollenization is only valid when it goes one way it makes the division into good and bad very simple. These people don't realize it, but they are fundamentalists whose moral code is as simplistic as that of any backwoods Baptist that they loathe.
Musical acts have been covering each other's songs since the beginning of popular music. For instance, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix and Olivia Newton-John covered Bob Dylan. Ray Charles covered Hank Williams Sr. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones did their share of covers, often of Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Carl Perkins. Covering a song is a sign of respect for the originator of the song. And the writer gets royalties. Money. Luke Combs is adding to Tracy Chapman's wealth.
On a personal note regarding Tracy Chapman, I am over six years older than my wife. When we met in 1989, I was totally out of pop music or rock music. I noticed my future wife had a Chapman CD in her car and I listened to it on my own. To be blunt, I thought it was crap. But I never had to listen to it again. I converted my future wife to Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and the Big Bands and left Tracy Chapman behind. And it has been happy ever after.
Thanks. It's been a long ride of 32 years. Mostly good and always a challenge. Six children, the oldest having open-heart at ten days old and one having Down Syndrome. I wouldn't trade my life for Trump's life.
The Emily Yahr’s of the world are a miserable lot. I’ve been in England most of the summer with my family, but recently had dinner with my oldest friend and his new wife while I was back in the Midwest. I didn’t make the wedding because I was out with Covid and it turns out it was probably good. I couldn’t get a word in. It was always oppression this, LGBTQ that, systematic this that and whatever. I have never met such a person in the flesh, and I don’t live a cloistered life: I live on the east coast and have family ties to Britain and work closely with big “woke” corporations. This was a real eye opener. I don’t think I got in 2 questions about how my friend’s life was since I’d last seen him in person a year and a half ago. I planned on paying the bill but let the waiter bring two checks.
The Emily Yahr’s of the world are more puritanical and dour than a strict canon law professor. Misplace the wrong word and, even innocently, you’ve committed heresy and need to be burned at the stake. An evening with one of them was eye opening.
Just touch the three little dots. That will enable you to edit. When you hit, "Post," you'll think, "Oh, sh*t, it disappeared," but it hasn't, you just have to refresh the page.
Everyone knows the biggest British rock peformers of the 60s and 70s were heavily influenced by 30s to 50s rhythm and blues. I found it a nice touch to find examples of each group respecting the others' musical accomplishments.
Search YouTube for 'Muddy Waters and Rolling Stones' for a lovely video where the megastar Stones, near peak popularity in 1981, make their way to a small Southside Chicago blues venue to hear Muddy Waters play. Eventually, Waters invites Jagger, Richards and Wood up to the stage to sing and jam with him. It's a beautiful sign of mutual respect among vastly different men united by love of music.
Your account of the strange look Henry Gray gave you in the club made me think of the novel White Tears by English writer Hari Kunzru. I've read some of Kunzru's other books and found them mediocre, but I've read White Tears 2 or 3 times and it is absolutely haunting. It's ostensibly about young white appreciators of older black music, but it has elements of ghost story, thriller, and historical fiction (about legendary blues record collector James McKune). Kunzru uses the ideas of music -- the rural blues in particular -- and of authenticity to show the gulf between the (white) America of optimism and progress and the (black) America of tragedy and horror. Kunzru is an expat in the US, so perhaps he has a unique perspective. As a fellow expat, a Southerner, a blues appreciator, and a commenter on race and the American scene in general, you should definitely read it.
Before seminary, I was in the music business. I don’t miss it for a second. I remember how inescapable Fast Car was, but I never new Tracy was gay. However, the narrative of “hard for the gays in music” from the piece you quoted is just stupid. Lilith Fair? Elton John, you know, one of the biggest sellers of all time? Queen? Even Judas Priest! Ugh.
Add Melissa Etherridge too. The arts are one field where being gay, even in the bad old days, was pretty well tolerated.
Johnny Mathis made out pretty well.
My favorite line in the musical “Jersey Boys”: This was 1959, people thought Liberace was just theatrical.
As Camille Paglia has noted, no one mentioned homosexuality before the late 1960s, except when necessary, and then via euphemisms mostly. It’s not that the idea was unknown, but it just wasn’t the first thing many people thought of when they saw two adult men living together as roommates. Or when a flamboyant performer happened on the scene.
Right. Clifton Webb stayed very much in the closet. And Alan Ladd. And George Cukor.
Exactly. I never thought of Miss Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies or Uncle Arthur on Betwitched that way either.
Ellen Corby was a lesbian and Wil Geer was bisexual so might as well be homosexual. A few of the actors in Andy Griffith were homosexual, most famously Gomer Pyle.
But the gen pop didn’t know it. I’m sad that I do because that always pops into my head when I watch the shows now.
Homer Pyle was a character played by Jim Nabors, the actor.
I knew tracy Chapman was gay but had no idea rob Halford was.
ha ha ha.....opposite for me!
As a matter of fact, I saw Judas Priest in the mid 80's and we were in the 3rd row, front. One of my friends is convinced that Rob was giving him "the eye"......LOL.
Looking back, it seems impossible that people didn't know Halford was gay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyEGGoWaxOc
It's just funny in retrospect that the gay leather look would be unconsciously adopted by straight teens (myself included) as hypermasculine.
It was an open secret in the metal world.
We know Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and Rob Halford are gay now. All were obliged to conceal their sexuality through the ‘70s and ‘80s (although Elton John said he was bisexual in the ‘70s). All of them waited until long after their careers were well established.
Would they have had the careers they did if they’d been out since the beginning? They (and the rest of the music industry) certainly didn’t seem to think so.
Nobody within the industry was under any illusions at any point.
I was 4 when this came out, living in Northern Ireland. No idea when I first would’ve heard it but it’s a classic song. I honestly had no idea the song was written and performed by a black woman. It doesn’t sound like I have no idea why it matters - it certainly didn’t stop me enjoying it and belting out the chorus when it came on the radio.
Music is covered by loads of different artists in different styles all the time. I am not a fan of rap music but I’ll quite happily admit that Run DMC’s version of Walk this way is better than Aerosmith’s original.
The left’s obsession with race and sexuality is exhausting. Why does it matter who sings a song? Let music be music. I want to hear baritone southern drawls singing country music and I want big brassy Motown singers. I want fiddles and bodhrans and I want bluesy electric guitars. My world would be a lot poorer if I was restricted to music that came solely from my culture. Why do they want to stop people enjoying things like this? What’s the end game here?
The endgame for the professional racialists spawned by Left academia is to set themselves up as Official Spokesthey/thems of their supposed "community", so that anytime their "community" is mentioned they get some piece of the action.
Think of it as part tollbooth collector and part Mafia extortion racket: "Nice business/career you have here, it would be a shame if it got destroyed because of your obvious complicity in upholding unjust power structures and causing harms to the marginalized."
Left academia is a "community" of sterile aspiring commissars, they cannot create but only "problematize", meaning isolate some target and batter it with moral bullying and emotional blackmail until they get a pound of flesh, whether that means forcing a groveling apology or just publishing a stupid article to get attention.
Leave Elvis out of this. He was extremely talented. This wasn't like taking a Little Richard song and putting out a mediocre white guy performance, it sort of went the other way around here. There are many others who could have been named instead, like Pat Boone (whose 90s album "In A Metal Mood" redeemed him, see YouTube for his hilarious self parody at an Easter Seals telethon).
Of course Elvis was extremely talented, but if you know anything about his history (read at least the first of Peter Guralnick's two-volume biography), you know that he made "race music" acceptable. There were some who heard Elvis on the radio at first and who called radio stations to complain that they were playing black music. It's not his fault that America was like that then. Elvis just liked that kind of music, and was good at it.
Ill have to read the book. I've known he's one of the guys who mainstreamed black music and isn't it a good thing he did? It can't be all Little Richard and Chuck Berry especially in that era.. Some Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis were needed. Come for Elvis.and eventually you might find yourself listening to Fats Domino. Speaking of that, I once saw Hank Williams Jr play. My mom got free tickets and I went to the show with her. I really only knew the football song from Hank's and I wasn't too impressed by all the classic Hank hits that were played. But when he moved to the piano and did an hour of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and all the rest it became one of the best concerts I've been to.
Yes, I think Elvis and the rest were great things! I can easily imagine why black roots musicians of the era felt shortchanged, but the fact is that this is what it took to mainstream black music in midcentury America. It would have been a far better world had that not been the case -- that is, had segregation not existed, and Big Mama Thornton and the others had been able to get on radio -- but that's not the world of mid-century America. What would people today have rather happened? That Elvis and the other white pioneers stayed in their lane, and played only country, or, God forbid, mayonnaisey late-period pop, with strings and stuff? The fact is, culture, and cultural development, is messy. It's why you can't simply will into existence Christian movies that are as good as the best of Hollywood.
Singers and musicians didn't make much money in the 50s as they do today. Presley was an outlier because he was managed well. Think about Buddy Holly. Died touring doing the small city tour in the upper MidWest. If not for Brian Epstein, the Beatles would have probably finished as a cover band in Liverpool. But Epstein's brilliance allowed Lennon and McCartney's brilliance to rise. The move to the LP and the gathering affluence in America, Britain and Europe helped a lot.
It's ironic that "Hound Dog" was written by two young Jewish guys, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were trolling black waters, hoping to come up with a hit.
Anyone who has read anything in depth about The Beatles knows that the early Lennon and McCartney were mildly obsessed with coming up with a song which would be picked up by one of the Motown girl groups. John Lennon said that "Tell Me Why," from "A Hard Day's Night," was as close as they could come, but none of the girl groups picked it up, which appears to have disappointed L&M. ( If you know that early 60s black girl group sound and can apply it to "Tell Me Why," you'll know what John Lennon was getting at. ) He also used to say that his sensational song, "You Can't Do That," was "me trying to do a Wilson Pickett bit."
Has that drip, Holly, ever heard of Charley Pride?
If you're a Fats Waller fan, almost certainly you own a copy of "Ain't Misbehavin'," the Broadway revue of Waller's songs which was a big hit in 1978. Could that show be done today? Most blacks have never heard of Fats Waller, let alone listen to his recordings. ( Some astute critic has pointed out that Fats Waller was as close to that black swan combination of a great musician and a great comic as we're ever likely to have. ) The vast majority of people who would be interested in attending a revival would be white, undoubtedly called out for implied racism by some assh*le like the WaPo reporter, because, you see, it could only be interpreted as an example of whiteys coming to hear the darkies perform for their amusement. The same is almost certainly true of Scott Joplin's opera, "Treemonisha."
Hank Jr. has about one percent of the talent of Hank Sr. Hank Williams Sr. is an American genius.
I've never known much about Sr or Jr but I do know that when Jr gets on the piano and starts playing the 50s hits he grew up listening to he's pretty awesome.
My mom graduated HS in 1960 and was not into popular music, with one exception -- Little Richard. She liked his outlandish makeup and stage persona. I chuckle when I think of my mom and grandparents -- a typical post-war, working-class family -- watching Little Richard sing "Lucille" and "Tutti Frutti" on the Ed Sullivan Show.
I listened to a Hank Jr. Greatest Hits CD for the first time in a couple years. He's pretty bad. If he didn't use his father's name for fame, he'd be as great as Gary Lewis- son of Jerry.
Perhaps a more accurate description might be race mixed music. White Americans had been listening to black musicians for a long long time before Elvis.
Exactly. Hip-hop may have edged out rock-n-roll, but rock-n-roll itself has black origins as well, even the name.
Yep. It all comes together. Somewhere long ago I read that Hank Williams said he learned a lot from listening to "black" music, and I heard Charley Pride say one time he learned a lot listening to Hank Williams.
And Ella Fitzgerald said her major inspiration was "Miss Connee Boswell."
The Boswell sister of Louisiana, right?
Isn't this about America importing ideas from Europe which already failed, like Marxism with an American accent?
Was there really a time when there were no joyless, anal leftwingers leaving no nit unpicked, whose motto should have been "That's not funny!" I remember the type very well from my college days when the student newspaper was always ranting about some worthy cause or other- and the one time I agreed with it (about Ann Arbor's poor bus service) I wondered if maybe I was feverish.
Oddly, I have no memory of "Fast Car".
The type has been around forever. Dickens satirized them in part with Mrs. Jellyby. England tried to export its load of them to Massachusetts in the 17th century, but obviously didn’t get them all in the boats. Nevertheless, here we are, afflicted with the mental descendants of those who did sail here.
Rod, I understand your complaint about how the song is being "problematized" and the LGBT stuff is getting thrown in for no good reason... and I totally agree with the larger point you are making but....
That Luke Combs version sucks. The Tracy Chapman version is iconic. No one should have covered that song - ever - and no one should have even tried to cover it. Some songs just belong to the original artist and this is one of them.
Remakes of songs (or movies!) do occasionally suck. No reason to politicize the suckage. If Combs did a poor job with this his race and sexuality are not the reason why.
Music covers do better than film covers. The best film cover was BEN HUR but that was because DeMille's version was silent.
Horseshit. Reinterpretation of iconic songs can oftentimes find new depths of meaning that the original artist might have missed themselves.
Best example of this is Johnny Cash doing such an amazing version of the Nine Inch Nail's hit "Hurt" that Trent Reznor says that it's a Johnny Cash song now.
It doesn't always work, of course. But even if it doesn't, the idea that an artist can't still be a fan of another artist and pay tribute to them by recording their own version of a song is somehow offensive to me.
https://youtu.be/rDyb_alTkMQ
I said some songs.
You are right, Dukeboy. Some covers are better. I'd take The Beatles "Twist and Shout" over the Isley Brothers version. George Harrison is a superior guitar player and John Lennon lost his voice for a couple weeks after singing it in the studio. Jimi Hendrix's "Watchtower" is a very different take on Bob Dylan's version. Both versions are fine.
Hendrix nailed it!
Even Dylan himself thought Hendrix's version had nailed it.
I gotta give a shout out to the Isley Brothers: their cover of Seals & Crofts' "Summer Breeze" is sublime.
I forgot about that Johnny Cash remake. It was emotionally brutal and a revelation, especially coming near the end of Johnny's life. The video was him singing while old footage of his lost family played in the background. It was chilling and all too real.
Right on. Remakes are part of the industry. If Chapman has the songwriting credit, then she is making lots of money with every play.
The Johnny Cash version is so painful and powerful and beautiful.
I prefer the original Fast Car, as I don't listen to much country, but I am glad anyone made a remake of the song.
If everything is "iconic" then nothing is. How I hate the current overuse of that word. It's almost as bad as "genre."
We are brothers. "Iconic" as applied to music is particularly ridiculous.
I dunno- hadn’t heard it before this article came out and played the two versions back to back with my wife. They sound pretty similar but her opinion (not that it counts for much to anyone but me) was that Luke had the better voice. Though he doesn’t sound like a checkout girl to be fair.
"I wish we could have it back."
But we can't, because: "American adults who identify as politically liberal have long reported lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being than conservatives, a trend that mental-health experts suspect is at least partly explained by liberals' tendency to spend more time worrying about stress-inducing topics like racial injustice, ..."
https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/why-depression-rates-are-higher-among-liberals
This eternally dour outlook gives us a piece lamenting the fact that... uh... (checks notes) Chapman becomes the first black queer woman artist to be the sole author of a #1 country song, which is certain to make her a boatload of money.
That's racial injustice?
I have read many studies over the years. Conservatives are more happy than the liberals. Liberals are more neurotic. I can believe it.
So....does liberalism make you neurotic, or does neurosis make you more apt to be liberal? Either way, I'm sure there's a symbiotic relationship involved. Some of the most joyless people I know are progressive millennials. For whatever reasons they seem to worry about *everything.*
Right, Rob. Does liberalism make you nuts? Or are you nuts and become a liberal? Horse and carriage.
Fast Car is a good song. I think Chapman wrote it and if she did she is deriving a monetary benefit from a successful cover. The idea that she’s being exploited by the country singer is absurd . She’s getting royalties. Now I knew nothing about Chapman .In that,I’m probably like most people. The emphasis that some of the writers place on her being gay is to put it mildly, questionable . Is Fast Car a gay song? Well Walk on the Wild Side, it’s not. The country singer is supposed to be so grateful to Black Gays that he’s now supposed to take a Black Gay act on the road with him?That doesn’t even make sense.Yes you do wonder how people come up with some of this nonsense. There is something very disturbing about this. It’s the desire on the part of some to set themselves up as cultural commissars who want to dictate not simply what we do but we think. Cultural product as these people might put it is to conform to and promote certain ideas and goals. Artists are to workers in service to what I guess you could call the revolution. That is their function.
I am of the same era as you Rod and I loved this song and listened to Tracy Chapman's album with Fast Car on repeat when I was in college. I loved the song even as it broke my heart. Listening to Luke Coombs cover just now (never heard it before), I was brought to tears because of the beauty of Tracy Chapman's words and music. The pain and longing she expresses is universal to all humans, even if someone finds that "problematic."
I wonder if the "liberals" are afraid of beauty and transcendence because they point us to God. Because Fast Car makes me think of our universal humanity and worthiness, the sacrifices we make, and the acts of mercy we must do for those around us. And that makes me want to head to the next Mass and worship!
Amen!
I thought Tracy Chapman was a dude when this song first came out. I honestly thought that for years. I liked the song okay, but I was a metalhead, so I wasn't paying much attention to it or the artist at the time. I appreciate it more as a fully- formed adult.
I'm sure that I'm not the only casual listener who made the same mistake at the time.
Never much liked the song back then, and still don't, actually. Even though I like a lot of folk music this one just never appealed to me musically. Having said that, I think the Combs version is fine, and agree with Rod's larger point, that everything that wokeness touches turns to shit.
Which reminds me -- saw an amazing bumper sticker online yesterday that made me laugh out loud: "Help Save Pregnant Men From Climate Change Inequity!" Then in small print, "Visit I'llbelieveanythingtheyf--kingtellme.com for more info."
“Fast Car” is the perfect combination of hope and despair. That’s its universality. Leftists such as the killjoys you mention patronize those they decry as marginalized by demanding the cross-pollination of cultural genres and then turn around and berate against cultural appropriation. How do they avoid whiplash? It’s freaking exhausting.
If you believe that the cross-pollenization is only valid when it goes one way it makes the division into good and bad very simple. These people don't realize it, but they are fundamentalists whose moral code is as simplistic as that of any backwoods Baptist that they loathe.
Thanks for confirming my passing on the latest desperate offer from WAPO: $29 for a whole year!
(So little time: I choose Dreher loghorrea—jk—over being “enlightened” by Bezos’ boys.)
Musical acts have been covering each other's songs since the beginning of popular music. For instance, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix and Olivia Newton-John covered Bob Dylan. Ray Charles covered Hank Williams Sr. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones did their share of covers, often of Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Carl Perkins. Covering a song is a sign of respect for the originator of the song. And the writer gets royalties. Money. Luke Combs is adding to Tracy Chapman's wealth.
On a personal note regarding Tracy Chapman, I am over six years older than my wife. When we met in 1989, I was totally out of pop music or rock music. I noticed my future wife had a Chapman CD in her car and I listened to it on my own. To be blunt, I thought it was crap. But I never had to listen to it again. I converted my future wife to Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and the Big Bands and left Tracy Chapman behind. And it has been happy ever after.
Yah I mildly liked it until it became overplayed...this new rendition is really great though...
Your wife sounds like a good little woman.
Yep.
Thanks. It's been a long ride of 32 years. Mostly good and always a challenge. Six children, the oldest having open-heart at ten days old and one having Down Syndrome. I wouldn't trade my life for Trump's life.
The Emily Yahr’s of the world are a miserable lot. I’ve been in England most of the summer with my family, but recently had dinner with my oldest friend and his new wife while I was back in the Midwest. I didn’t make the wedding because I was out with Covid and it turns out it was probably good. I couldn’t get a word in. It was always oppression this, LGBTQ that, systematic this that and whatever. I have never met such a person in the flesh, and I don’t live a cloistered life: I live on the east coast and have family ties to Britain and work closely with big “woke” corporations. This was a real eye opener. I don’t think I got in 2 questions about how my friend’s life was since I’d last seen him in person a year and a half ago. I planned on paying the bill but let the waiter bring two checks.
The Emily Yahr’s of the world are more puritanical and dour than a strict canon law professor. Misplace the wrong word and, even innocently, you’ve committed heresy and need to be burned at the stake. An evening with one of them was eye opening.
And I really wish Substack would let me correct some spelling/grammar mistakes I made and didn’t notice until I published.
You can edit on the website.
Just touch the three little dots. That will enable you to edit. When you hit, "Post," you'll think, "Oh, sh*t, it disappeared," but it hasn't, you just have to refresh the page.
Everyone knows the biggest British rock peformers of the 60s and 70s were heavily influenced by 30s to 50s rhythm and blues. I found it a nice touch to find examples of each group respecting the others' musical accomplishments.
Search YouTube for 'Muddy Waters and Rolling Stones' for a lovely video where the megastar Stones, near peak popularity in 1981, make their way to a small Southside Chicago blues venue to hear Muddy Waters play. Eventually, Waters invites Jagger, Richards and Wood up to the stage to sing and jam with him. It's a beautiful sign of mutual respect among vastly different men united by love of music.
I appreciate you mentioning that Muddy Waters/ Stones video. Just watched it, and it was fantastic.
Your account of the strange look Henry Gray gave you in the club made me think of the novel White Tears by English writer Hari Kunzru. I've read some of Kunzru's other books and found them mediocre, but I've read White Tears 2 or 3 times and it is absolutely haunting. It's ostensibly about young white appreciators of older black music, but it has elements of ghost story, thriller, and historical fiction (about legendary blues record collector James McKune). Kunzru uses the ideas of music -- the rural blues in particular -- and of authenticity to show the gulf between the (white) America of optimism and progress and the (black) America of tragedy and horror. Kunzru is an expat in the US, so perhaps he has a unique perspective. As a fellow expat, a Southerner, a blues appreciator, and a commenter on race and the American scene in general, you should definitely read it.