Watch: Tracy Chapman, Luke Combs Unite the Nation with Stunning ‘Fast Car’ Duet at the Grammys

Renowned singer Tracy Chapman and country star Luke Combs united the nation on Sunday night with a stunning duet of Chapman’s classic song Fast Car, a gorgeous moment of torch-passing and symbolic defeat of the vocal minority of woke cultural commentators who had originally sought to politicize the crossover.

Chapman and Combs took to the stage at the 66th Grammy Awards to deliver a five-minute duet of the hit song in what would be Chapman’s first public performance in several years. She did not miss a beat and audiences were ecstatic.

Chapman’s “Fast Car” catapulted her to the top charts in the 1980s, receiving three Grammy nominations and winning the award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. While regarded as a pop ballad and a classic throughout the decades, Luke Combs delivered the song to a new generation in 2023 with his chart-topping country cover.

Combs said he fell in love with the song in his youth when his father played it on a cassette tape, adding that he wanted to honor what he believed was perfection.

“You want to just be mega respectful of the original song,” he told CMT last year.. “That’s why in [my cover], it’s, ‘work in the market as a checkout girl.’ I didn’t change that…I really wanted to just do the original version of the song.”

Chapman herself entered the history books with Combs’ cover by becoming the first black woman to hit number one on the country airwaves with a solo composition.

Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs perform onstage during the 66th GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 04, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

“I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there. I’m happy for Luke and his success and grateful that new fans have found and embraced ‘Fast Car,'” she said.

Despite this incredible moment of unity and cross-generational homage, the Washington Post published a rather peculiar commentary from Emily Yahr saying the song’s newfound success renewed “difficult conversations about diversity in Nashville.”

To quite a few people, this is cause for yet another celebration in Combs’s whirlwind journey as the genre’s reigning megastar with 16 consecutive No. 1 hits. But it has also prompted a wave of complicated feelings among some listeners and in the Nashville music community. Although many are thrilled to see “Fast Car” back in the spotlight and a new generation discovering Chapman’s work, it’s clouded by the fact that, as a Black queer woman, Chapman, 59, would have almost zero chance of that achievement herself in country music.

The numbers are bleak: A recent study by data journalist Jan Diehm and musicologist Jada Watson reported that fewer than 0.5 percent of songs played on country radio in 2022 were by women of color and LGBTQ+ artists. Watson’s previous work shows that songs by women of color and LGBTQ+ artists were largely excluded from radio playlists for most of the two decades prior.

Holly G, the founder of the Black Opry, an organization for Black country music singers and fans, said Luke Combs being a white man curtailed her excitement in seeing a black woman’s song hit with country music fans.

“On one hand, Luke Combs is an amazing artist, and it’s great to see that someone in country music is influenced by a Black queer woman — that’s really exciting,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s hard to really lean into that excitement knowing that Tracy Chapman would not be celebrated in the industry without that kind of middleman being a White man.”

The article sparked a massive backlash from both the left and the right, who felt it had diminished Tracy Chapman’s cultural achievement by reducing her to another helpless victim despite her unprecedented success. Fortunately, as the months went on, neither Chapman nor Combs took the bait and ignored the divisive conceit, officially putting the false controversy to an end on Sunday night when the two bowed in honor of the other as the audience rose for a rousing standing ovation.

Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.