Album Essentials: Tracy Chapman "Tracy Chapman"
By Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor
To have your debut album not only garner vast critical acclaim, but to also connect with a huge audience is truly something special. The 1989 debut from Tracy Chapman not only brought in rave reviews, three Grammy wins, and four other nominations, but hit #1 in nine countries, and No. 2 in four others, ultimately selling multi-platinum across the world. Not bad for this Cleveland, Ohio born singer/songwriter, who was a mere 24 years old at the time.
In 1989, in the midst of a shallow and sparkly world of pop and metal, Tracy Chapman's debut album seemed like an artifact from a different planet, let alone a different time. Her mixture of folk, reggae, blues, and soul, within the pop format, made Chapman stand out even more. It was because of this distance from the mainstream that people noticed in a big way.
The song that initially got attention focused on her by the record companies was 'Talkin' About A Revolution,' but as we know, it was 'Fast Car,' that when released as the album's first single, would shine the spotlight firmly upon her. The entire album is filled with such mini classics, gems that transcend the time and place they were made, catchy enough to grab an ear, but substantial enough to hold attention. For many, the thought was Tracy was the new social and political voice on the streets, but she saw it differently. "People refer to me as being a protest singer, being revolutionary and all," she told NPR in 1988, "I know the kind of music I do is different than popular music on the radio today, and it’s not new for a black person. Black people have a history of folk music."
Because of, or perhaps in spite of, this take, it certainly helped Chapman gain ground. Songs like 'Mountains O' Things,' and 'Behind The Wall' tackled topics and turned heads lyrically, while the sparse and sometimes haunting musical approach held it all in place. Singing about homelessness, domestic violence, the political stance of America, and a hopeful call for change, may have clashed with the 'nothing but a good time' party going on elsewhere, but it stood tall on its own.
"I think many of the songs I've written, there's an element of hope in there," Chapman told MTV back in 1988. "In a sense I guess it's a double edged sword, let's look at all the things that might be unpleasant, but we have to look at them if we’re going to come up with solutions to these problems, and to do that, you have to hope that things can get better."
The album was produced by the highly respected David Kershenbaum, who was behind many significant records by artists such as Duran Duran, Joe Jackson, Bryan Adams, Supertramp, Cat Stevens, Elkie Brooks, and Tori Amos. In speaking with Rolling Stone at the time of release, Kershenbaum said, "I wanted to make sure that she was in front, vocally and thematically, and that everything was built around her." He was betting that there were enough music fans craving something of more substance and less glitz.
"There was a set of ideas that we wanted to communicate, and we felt if we were truthful and loyal to those ideas, then people would pick up on the emotion and the lyrical content that was there." Kershenbaum's instincts were correct, as the album turned out to be the right album at the right moment.
She definitely touched a nerve with the public on that first album, which lead to a solid twenty year career, mostly dormant since her last album in 2008. Only recently, with the chart topping cover of 'Fast Car,' by current country sensation Luke Combs, is she back in the spotlight. His version hitting #1 caused her to become the first Black woman to score a country number one with a solo composition, while at the 57th Annual CMA's in 2023, she also became the first Black woman to ever take home a CMA Award, winning ‘Song of the Year’ for 'Fast Car.' She later made a public re-emergence when she appeared on the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, earlier this year, to join Combs on 'Fast Car.'
“It’s hard to be a commentator on your own work, and try to analyze what you’ve written, when sometimes you don’t even know what you’ve done,” she told Spin. “That’s why I write songs and I don’t write books. People always want to know about the person that writes, and the easiest thing to do is assume that they write about themselves, and that you can gain insight into what the writer thinks and feels. But that’s not necessarily true. In songs, you take on different personas and different characters, and try and put yourself in their place. Plus, I think that if you go about explaining everything about a song, it’s gone.”
Even though Tracy Chapman has had a healthy career in music, her self-titled debut remains the cornerstone of her catalog for many, and it’s easy to see why it remains essential.