“Crossroads” by Tracy Chapman

"Crossroads" gave Tracy Chapman's second album both its name and its first single in 1989, and she wrote it alone and produced it with David Kershenbaum. It stays in the grave, searching register listeners already knew from her, turning over life's hard knocks and what they cost, and Smash Hits reckoned anyone who liked "Fast Car" would like this one too.

What's new is the dressing. Around the acoustic guitars of Chapman and G.E. Smith come Charlie Bisharat's plucked violin, Frank Marocco's accordion, Bobbye Hall's percussion, Larry Klein's bass, Denny Fongheiser's drums and Bob Marlette's keyboards. Rolling Stone's Fred Goodman credited the percussion, violin and accordion with putting muscle on her once-skeletal sound, even if the song doesn't take her anywhere new. Kevin Smith engineered and mixed it, and Matt Mahurin directed the video.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.