“Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

"Fast Car" was Tracy Chapman's first single, issued by Elektra in April 1988 as the lead song from her self-titled debut album, and it sounds like nothing else that year: just a circling, hypnotic acoustic guitar figure and a voice so plain and steady it stops you cold. Chapman wrote it alone, and on the record she plays acoustic and electric guitar and percussion herself, with Larry Klein on bass, Denny Fongheiser on drums and Ed Black's steel guitar glinting in the background. Kevin Smith engineered and mixed it, keeping everything spare so the story can breathe.

It didn't need hype, just an audience. Her appearance at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert in June 1988 lit the fuse: the song climbed to number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and pushed the album all the way to the top of the Billboard 200. It reached number five in the UK and went to number one in five other countries.

At the 31st Annual Grammy Awards in 1989 it was up for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, winning the last, and the video earned an MTV Video Music Award nomination for Best Female Video.

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