60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Give Me One Reason”—Tracy Chapman

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Rob ranks the books he was forced to read in high school before turning his focus on the greatness of Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” from her 1995 album ‘New Beginning.’ Later, Rob is joined by fellow Ohio native and author Hanif Abdurraqib to discuss why Ohio breeds such great writers such as Tracy Chapman. The guys also get into Chapman’s appearance at the Grammy’s and much more. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Hanif Abdurraqib Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Brian Curtis from The Ringer, and I want to tell you about the Press Box podcast. The Press Box is a podcast for anybody who likes news, whether it's about sports or politics or pop culture, and wants to understand how that news really gets made. We have news shows every Monday and Thursday. We have long interviews with everyone from John Crackauer to Joe Buck. Your social media feeds are bursting with information every day. Let us help you sort it out. Join us.

on the press box. Henry David Thoreau once said, When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest. End quote. He was talking about Rage Against the Machine's cover of Bruce Springsteen's

The Ghost of Tom Jode. No, he wasn't. That's not what Henry David Throw was talking about. I apologize. He was talking about something else. I am talking about Rage Against the Machines cover of Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Jode. I am talking about that bitchen roaring guitar tone right there. The burr. I heard this song for the first time when I played it on college radio. And I stood in our modest DJ booth with our modest speakers cranked up to incredible volume, and I felt this song radiate majestically across our campus where nobody else could hear me on the radio at all due to technical reasons, and I let the burr wash over me and course through my veins and transform and baptize and radicalize me. I feared no danger. I was invulnerable, and suddenly I saw foes everywhere, and I vowed to devote the rest of my life to vanquishing them. Tom Jode is a noble character in the 1939 John Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath,

just in case nobody made you read that book in high school. I dug it. I remember the oranges. The oranges really got to me. The oranges doused in kerosene so the poor people couldn't eat them. And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the orange. And they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit, and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

That's a bar. John Steinbeck's got bars. I don't mind saying it. I should mind saying that, but I don't. Matter of fact, look out. Books they made me read in high school ranked in descending order of how much I enjoyed myself. Here we go, from best to worst. The grapes of wrath, pretty rome.

their eyes were watching God, the importance of being earnest, the stranger, French, the great Gatsby, Othello, I know why the caged bird sings, native son, I'm enjoying myself way less starting now. Fathers and sons, two Russian, Oedipus Rex, gross, crime and punishment, too long and too Russian. Winsberg, Ohio, Winsberg is right. Stop grousing. If I can survive living in Ohio, then so can you. And finally, the worst book they made me read in high school, Ethan Frome. Ooh, their sled crashes. Spoiler alert, they take a sled ride and crash on purpose. I'm sorry about your problems, but I don't have time for this. I'm reading this full passage from the Grapes of Wrath again, the oranges part.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back. They come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed, and they stand still and watch the potatoes float by. Listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick lime. Watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze. And in the eyes of the people, there is the failure. And in the eyes of the hungry, there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heads. growing heavy for the vintage.

Legit. There's an outside chance I wrote the sentence. John Steinbeck is legit, verbatim, on an AP English exam. B-minus. I'm into it. He's legit. You know it.

I know it. Bruce Springsteen knows it. How well you're alive tonight. Nobody's kidding. Nobody about where it goes. Sitting down here in the campfire line. I never had to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Nobody made me read Walden in high school.

I'm pretty sure I dodged a bullet there. He sleeps on the porch. That's the whole deal with Walden, right? It's whatever. I don't have time for that either. It is many years before I get around to hearing Bruce Springsteen's original 1995 version of the ghost of Tom Jode. And speaking to you is a certain type of man, white, born in a certain time, the 20th century, and a certain place, America,

I got Bruce affinities, right? I got biases. I am predisposed to the boss. I find it profound that Bruce Springsteen is the voice of the working man, so we nicknamed him the boss. Bruce Springsteen is super legit, but it is many years after I hear his original

The Ghost of Tom Jod before I learned to truly appreciate it. For many years, I find Bruce's version to be a little tame. I find it insufficient. There is no burr in Bruce's version, nor does Bruce's version have these drums. These drums, dude,

boops, these drums are ultra-legit. There are two versions of Rage Against the Machine's version of Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Jod. Avoid the more prominent version on that whole Rage Against the Machine. Against the Machine covers album, Renegades from 2000.

That version stinks. It's got extra stuff. It's got bonus guitar. It's got penalty guitar right here going, it's extraneous. Cool it. At their best, Rage Against the Machine

are famously all about minimalism and restraint. Let these ultra-legit drums breathe. You want this version of Rage Against the Machine's version. From the 1999 compilation, No Boundaries, a benefit for the Kosovo refugees. Also featuring Oasis, the Indigo Girls, Black Sabbath, Jamiriqui,

Pearl Jam's Last Kiss, I should have led with that, and the freaking bitch mix of Corn's freak on a leash. I've honestly never heard that one, but I'll just assume that the freaking bitch mix is the superior version of freak on a leash. just as this is the superior version of the ghost of Tom Joy, you got to picture me in college at my physical and mental peak.

An entire radio station, nobody could hear at my command with this shit, thundering through my head and nobody else's. And when Zach Dela Rochette starts going, you'll see me, you'll see me, you got to picture me, picking up the couch in our air studio,

and throwing it through a wall, and then running through the wall, opposite that wall. Incredible. I remember this moment vividly. I remember how powerful I felt. I remember my own wrath. When I was a kid, when I was a teenager, when I was 21, this was protest music to me. This is what protest music, what righteous incendiary political music had to be.

It had to kick ass. It had to kick ass literally. It had to go burr. It had to be loud. and furious and super macho. It took quite a while. It took a few years, perhaps, for me to unlearn this, to discard these biases, to expand my horizons,

to fully embrace other forms of incendiary musical righteousness. I unlearned the part about it having to be super macho first. If you, like me, happen to live a relatively cloistered, MTV dependent mall haunting stereotypically alt-rockin sort of 90s teenage existence. Were you dependent on alt-rock radio and MTV and Camelot music in the mall and magazines like Rolling Stone and spin and maybe even sassy to clue you in everything, then maybe you, like me, read about Kathleen Hannah before you heard her voice or heard her band, Bikini Kill. For instance, Bikini Kill's Righteous and Incendiary 1993 Anthem.

Rebel Girl. Just for maximum cultural dissonance, I have elected to play you this version of Rebel Girl from rock band to the video game with the plastic instruments. This is a dude on YouTube playing Rebel Girl on drums on rock band on expert to 100% completion. It's very impressive. We all have our role to play in the revolution. I read about Kathleen Hannah first. right i read about the olympia washington band bikini kill i read about the larger righteous incendiary political and musical movement of riot girl first i read about how kathleen was hang out with kirk cobain and she wrote kurt smells like teen spirit on the wall and that's why kurt named that song that you know the first time i saw kathleen hannah on mtv in

the video for bull in the heather by sonic youth where kathleen spent the whole video dancing around and antagonizing everyone in the band. I remember being like, who's this girl with the pig tails and what she got against Thurston Moore? That's right at the part in the video where Kathleen is basically trying to wrestle

Thurston Moore's guitar away from him while Kim Gordon is singing serenely in the foreground. I'll tell you what. If you let a relatively cloistered alt-rock in MTV-dominated existence, Kim Gordon's voice just on its own was a portal, was the portal, to pretty much any remotely discordant vocal style, to really any lifestyle, not explicitly fashioned in the image of poison or pearl jam. I bought the 1992 album

Dirty by Sonic Youth because I really loved hearing Thurston sing Sugarcane on the radio. And as a bonus, I got like a half dozen songs where Kim Gordon was growling at me. At first, I was quite alarmed. I love you. I love you. I love you. That song's called Drunken Butterfly, and I found it tremendously alarming, but it took way longer to wrap my head around Kathleen Hannah and Bikini Kill and the larger Riot Girl movement, which as it turns out, was not just a corny new genre name rock critics made up to sell more records to whiny knuckleheads in Ohio. It is unfortunately years before I can get my hands on, say, the great 2010 book, Girls to the Front, the true story. of the Riot Girl Revolution, written by Sarah Marcus.

It is years before I can read about how hard Kathleen had to work to keep all the magazines I was reading from defining and commodifying her band and her music and her old ethos. I got to say, I feel pretty weird attempting to define any of this now. It seems contrary to the whole spirit of this endeavor. Here's a Bikini Kill song called Don't Need You. All right. Never mind. Can I say one thing, though, about this song that I learned just now.

Did you know that Don't Need You by Bikini Kill once appeared in an episode of Roseanne, the sitcom starring Roseanne? Roseanne and Aunt Jackie are driving around for some reason with a surly young lady in the backseat. And the surly lady is like, yeah, I'm a riot girl. And my band's called The Unit Shredders. And here's a bikini kill tape. Put this on the stereo. And then we literally watch Roseanne and.

Aunt Jackie listened to Bikini Kill. Good message, huh? It's freedom rock, man. Turn it up. Well, yeah, see, Jackie, she's got a metal plate in her head and it amplifies the sound. It's freedom rock, man. Turn it up. That's funny.

That's very funny. Did you hear just now how the hit sitcom Roseanne snuck the Bikini Kill line, don't need your dick to fuck into a sitcom episode? That show was hardcore. Setting aside future events, Roseanne also had a part to play in the Revolution. In Sarah Marcus' book, Girls to the Front, she prints a two-page list of instructions

that Kathleen Hannah had written around 1991, instructions for Kathleen's readers and listeners, and perhaps also instructions for herself, that Kathleen published in both the Bikini Kill zine and the Riot Girl Zine. The instructions are, recognize that you are not the center of the universe figure out how the idea of winning and losing fits in your relationships be as vulnerable as you possibly can recognize vulnerability and empathy as strengths don't allow the fact that other people have been assholes to you make you into a bitter and abusive person commit to the revolution as a method of psychological and physical survival.

End quote. Given how confrontational and uncompromising she was willing to be, Kathleen's vulnerability and empathy did not get enough media attention in real time in the 90s as a bikini kill and riot girl as a whole rose to prominence. Kathleen's sense of humor didn't get enough attention either. Kathleen now is a beloved figure, a deified fountain of necessary wrath. She's the focal point of great books. She's the subject of the great 2013 documentary, the punk singer, etc.

In 2022, Cream Magazine profiled her under the headline, Kathleen Hannah won't save you, so stop asking her to. And she says, quote, I feel like humor is such an important part of life for people who are marginalized or oppressed in any way. Because how are you going to get through the fucking day? We want to speak back to the people who fuck with us. and make us feel like shit, but you can't always do that.

And so you end up making jokes at home with your friends about it. I just feel like I would rather laugh than cry sometimes. So humor has been really valuable to my mental health, end quote. I'm defining her again, sorry, but last thing. In the late 90s with Bikini Killed Dorman, Kathleen started a new band called La Tigra,

who put out their first album, also called La Tigra, in 1999. And my final thought on the matter is that my favorite song featuring Kathleen Hannah's voice is called What's Your Take on Cassavetes? And I'm here to tell you that this is one of the greatest pieces of film criticism ever conceived. And there is certainly no rage against the machine song that is 10% this funny. Okay, so it is a slow process for me anyway to realize that this, too, is a crucial form of revolutionary incendiary musical righteousness, which as it turns out doesn't have to be loaded up with burr-type guitars,

nor is it required to be humorless and macho. All right, let's keep that same energy, but add some ultra-altra legit drums. The first beast that will appear will entice us with money and fame. If you listen long enough, you'll forget there's anything else. That's incredible. Didn't learn about this band on MTV, but the ultra, ultra, ultra-legit drums, too, right?

Incredible. Slater Kinney, also from Olympia, Washington. Also fantastic, essential, transformative. And Rob, please stop saying revolutionary. This song is called The End of You. It appears on Slater Kenny's fourth and best album. 1999's The Hot Rock. What's that?

You don't think that's the best Slater Kenny album? I'm sorry to hear. I'm kidding. I can't hear you. It's a podcast. Stupendis. The hot rock is the best Slater Kenny record by far. Start together.

Burn, don't freeze. Get up. I can actually hear you now because you're agreeing with me. Tie me to the mast of this ship and of this band. Tie me to the greater things. The people that I love. Slater Kenny took themselves seriously. People who adore Slater Kenny,

myself included, take them even more seriously. Late in college, somebody made me a mixtape, and it's the first time I'd seriously listen to Slater Kinney or Cat Power or Pulp. And I still grouped those bands together in my head. It was the dead of summer, and I was staying in this super hot attic room off campus, and it was one of those deals.

I don't know if this ever happened to you, but where I'd been on the same campus for years now, and it was like two blocks or so away from where I usually hung out, but somehow it felt like a whole alternate universe. and I'm sweating profusely and I'm just inundated by bewildering and delightful newness. Very intense mind state in which to encounter cat power is what I'm saying. That song's called Colors in the Kids, and it helped convince me that vulnerability and empathy are strengths,

though it did also kind of make me feel like the center of the universe. So, vulnerability, empathy, waning narcissism, young love, Liminal spaces, cheap apartment rentals, people who are assholes to you, the lifelong battle to prevent assholes from making you into a bitter and abusive person, barely restrained wrath. Who do we think of when we think of all that? Do you think of Ani? Because I do. In each other's shadow, we grew less and less tall. And eventually our theories couldn't explain it all. I think of both hands by Ani DeFranco. Ani DeFranco from Buffalo, the Ohio of New York State. Ani DeFranco started her own record label, Righteous Babe, when she was 19,

because she would not be enticed by the major label beast that appeared and offered her money in fame. Ani who put out at least one album every year in the 90s, quite a daunting catalog. Any who made solo acoustic jams with burr energy. Ani who made the personal political and the political personal. Ani who's debut album called Ani DeFranco came out in 1990 and starts with this incredible song, both hands, and the furtive guitar, right? The tempo fluctuates, the volume fluctuates.

There's a dynamic volatility that reflects her emotional volatility. Ani is the guitar god who taught me. The guitar gods did not need distortion pedals and solos. And the line about the landlord here is a killer. And Ani just blows right past it because she's the best. It all and I'm recording our history now on the bedroom wall. And when we leave, the landlord will come and paint over it all. And I'm walking.

Sophomore year at college, my ill-advised open mic night phase begins. And let's not get into it. But my friend Carly wants to sing some songs with me playing guitar. And she asked me to play Ani's both hands while she sing. it and we do it and carly sounds great and i survive i can survive attempting this annie de franco song on guitar i remember vividly carly brings me another annie cd the live ony de franco double cd living and carly's like can you try this song gravel next and we sit there and we listen to gravel and my face goes bone white and i go no i cannot i push through the screen door and i stood out on

the porch thinking fight fight fight at all cut the fight fight right there the percussive gunshot quality the synchronized emotional and rhythmic volatility ony's the best and anyway no i cannot play that shit no no way i don't know who you take me for guitar wise carly but i need you to start thinking less of me that song is way too fast and way too fancy and way too awesome i need a franco is also somebody a relatively cloistered MTV-dependent mall haunting, stereotypically alt-rock in sort of 90s teenage existence. Maybe you read about her before you hear her. Maybe you first encountered Anni on the cover of Spin in 1998 with the headline Rock's Most Unlikly Superstar. And she's talking about her bisexuality. She talks about how she wears lipstick and girly dresses sometimes, even if that antagonizes her devoted fan base. She talks about how she gets annoyed when a fan, when a girl at his show screams out,

Men are pigs. Ani says, quote, like I'm supposed to have hammered out this niche for myself now. I'm the stompy-booted sort of butchy, go-girl folkstress. And I'm supposed to just roll with that like I'm a caricature of myself. People try to turn me into my fans. I was thinking that again last night when that chick yelled out, Men are pigs. I was thinking, you are.

why they stereotype me. All my life, I've been the angry, man-hating, puppy-eating, hairy, homely, feminist bitch. So I guess, yeah, I cannot be a caricature. But a lot of my fans do want it simple. They want it easy. And when I insist on my own stupid personality quirks,

it can be offensive to them. End quote. I totally get Ani being annoyed at fans who stereotype her so intensely and take her so seriously. But then I listen to an Ani DeFranco record and I totally get why people take her so seriously. I opened a bank account when I was nine years old.

I closed it when I was 18. I gave them every penny that I had saved and they gave my blood and my urine a number. This song is called Lost Woman song. It's also on the first, the self-titled Ani DeFranco record from 1990. And I couldn't play this shit even if I tried, which of course I didn't try.

I'm not an idiot. And once again, the barrage of words mirroring the barrage of notes here. The verbal and musical and emotional torrent here is really, really, really, really quite something. This song, Lost Woman's song, is newly perpetually, dismayingly relevant. And I'm going to leave it at that.

I am here to exercise my freedom of choice. And Anni DeFranco also can be very, very, very funny. Ani's got another song from 1993 called Pick Your Nose, where the chorus goes, I fight with love and I laugh with rage. You've got to live light long enough to see the humor and long enough to see some change. In that spin cover story, the writer mentions to Ani that he didn't expect her shows to be funny. And later, Ani says, quote,

I was thinking about something that you said last night, that you didn't expect that my show would be funny. I've always had this basic understanding of what folk music is, that it has to do with economics, that it is sub-corporate music. Folk music is not on the radio. Folk music does not make money. Folk music is more community-based, politically oriented of the people. Rock music is usually more of a commodity. But you made me realize that another major distinction between rock and roll and folk music is humor. What references in rock do you have for humor? Rock and roll takes itself so seriously.

Folk music never does, because it's not cool to be funny. It's corny. My new little manifesto is that folk singers take everything very seriously except for themselves. They talk about social issues, political issues, their country, their society, their lives, their time, their place. But in the whole rock and roll milieu,

you take nothing seriously, save yourself. It's so self-serious and tortured and grandiose. End quote. And so this song, Lost Woman song, there is no laughter in it,

even the rage-filled kind. And this is as serious as it gets. But speaking as someone who grew up with confused and stereotypical ideas about political music and protest music and the difference between folk music and rock music, it's really something

how overwhelming and wrathful and powerful this song gets, the quieter it gets. And under the fierce fluorescent, she offered her hand for me to hold. She offered stability and calm, and I was crushing her palms. And so you take all these lessons.

Not you, me. And so I take all these lessons about rock music versus folk music, about guitar gods. about the self-seriousness of burr-type distortion, about vulnerability and empathy, about the growing wrath in the eyes of the hungry, about the quietest voices reverberating the loudest, about the necessity of committing to the revolution as a method of psychological and physical survival. You take all these lessons, I take all these lessons, and I apply them to my relatively cloistered MTV-dependent mall-haunting, stereotypically alt-rock in 90s teenage existence. And these lessons, however belated, give me crucial new ways to hear transcendent pop songs I've already heard a billion times. You cried. I can use you this time.

You cried. I cried. Everyone cried. According to the internet, everyone cried. My mom texted me. You know how many times my mom has texted me about the Grammys? Zero times previously. Did you hear that giant burst of applause just now for Tracy Chapman at the 2024 Grammys?

You remember how this performance opens with a hero shot? It's zoomed in on her guitar on her hands, playing the immortal, gentle, vulnerable, empathetic riff to fast car. And everyone in the world thought, is that really her? And the camera slowly zoomed out. And it was really her. And you got like chills. You remember that?

You got chills. I got chills. Everyone got chills. Everyone cried. I'm here to tell you I've been. complaining about the Grammys on a professional level for my whole entire life. You can go years. You can go decades waiting for one Grammy moment that literally anyone enjoys.

And Tracy Chapman is the only Grammy moment in history that literally everyone enjoyed. Me, myself, I got nothing to lose. Me, myself, I got nothing to prove. Me, myself, I got nothing to prove. She sounds like she's almost crying, right? She's so moved in this moment by the realization that she's making everyone else cry. So this country singer, Luke Combs, right? Luke Combs is like a giant, sentient Sam's Club end cap, right?

The end cap's got like beef jerky and camouflage winter coats in it. He's got the baseball cap. It's like he perpetually walks around in a fishing boat with like holes in the bottom of the boat. for his legs and feet. I don't even mean any of this pejoratively. As Blockbuster Arena-filling modern country bros go, Luke Combs is pretty cool, I got to say. So Luke Combs in 2023 has this bonkers chart-topping hit cover of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. I was playing Cornhole at my family reunion in rural Pennsylvania last summer, and Luke Combs's cover of Fast Car came on the radio, and I got really super good at Cornhole for like 45 seconds. It was awesome. I'm not

explaining what cornhole is if you're not familiar. I don't have time. And there is some consternation, understandably, about a big burly country bro dominating country radio, the ultra macho pickup truck humping, he-man, women haters club cesspool. That is country radio. There's consternation

about Luke Combs, dominating country radio with a beloved song written in song by a black woman, sung by Tracy Chapman, an international deity and somewhat of a deified mirage nowadays, not a public figure, not someone who requires our attention or approval. Me, myself, I got nothing to prove. But suddenly Tracy Chapman's on my TV again, playing fast car with Luke Combs, but never mind, Luke Combs. There's Tracy Chapman,

beaming with joy. And you're crying and I'm crying, and I don't know about you, but when I cry, I get florid, right? I start thinking about the fast car guitar riff, the modest, pristine little melodic jump. It's not a huge leap. She slides up, what, eight frets on her guitar, but it feels like a huge leap. And then I start thinking about the lyrics to Fast Car, the modesty of the escape Fast Car describes. Won't have to drive too far. Just cross the border and into the city.

Eight frets equals eight highway exits, maybe. And then I start thinking about the line, Mama went off and left him. She wanted more from life than he could give. And then I think about the climactic verse of fast car, the downer ending, the disillusionment, the realization that the singer has become like her mother, still longing for escape. I'd always hope for better. I'd always hoped for better. Holy shit. Listen, I get emotional.

All right? I said I cried. I didn't say I stopped crying. I have heard fast car a billion times. And thanks to the Grammys, I will now happily endeavor to hear it a billion more times. We're playing the chorus. Of course, we're playing the chorus. I'm not a monster. I remember when we were driving, driving in your car. Seeds are fast, like I was gone. City lights day I've been bored.

And once again, the melodic leap we're about to take here, the IEI, is not some enormous, grandiose, overwrought rock and roll type gesture, but it's all the more triumphant and devastating and then triumphant again for how modest it is. She fears no danger. She is invulnerable. She sees no foe. She is related to the earliest times and to the latest. Fast car came out in 1988. It appears on Tracy Chapman's debut album, self-titled from 1988. I heard Fast Car one billion times in the 1990s. It is canonically, essentially, indelibly, yet not officially the 90s, and thus technically outside my purview.

But Tracy Chapman is a figure of tremendous compassion and understanding. And that is why Tracy gifted us with another bonkers hit song. And this one was the 90s, canonically, essentially, indelibly, and officially. Us works there. She gave this gift to all of us, but she gave this gift to me, especially. My name is Rob Harvilla.

This is the 118th episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s, and this week we are discussing Give Me One Reason by Tracy Chapman. From her 1995 album, New Beginning. I didn't need another reason to talk about Tracy Chapman, but I am grateful to the Grammys anyway for giving me another reason.

Before I get distracted by anything else, listen to this guitar riff. Dude, you've heard this song at least half a billion times, but there's a reason for that. She's playing electric guitar now, but there's no overblown grandiosity to it. There is, instead, tremendous personality, the slyness, the flirtatiousness, the skepticism. This is a guitar riff that says, I am ill-advisedly attracted to you, and I am aware that you will gravely disappoint me. Listen to the way the first note bounces, dude. I keep wanting to describe this as bluesy also,

and bluesy is accurate as analysis, given the vibe and the chord structure and whatnot. But this word bluesy just feels weird in my mouth, though now I've said the word three times where I could have just said bluesy once and kept it moving. Four times now. In the early 2000s of my 23, maybe, and I go see a rad local blues band in Columbus.

of Ohio. And I'm sitting behind this woman who's drinking a bottle of Mike's hard lemonade. And she's banging her bottle of Mike's hard lemonade on the table in time to the music. Like do do do do do do do do do. And this image fucked me up for weeks. I can't explain it. That's ungenerous, clueless young snooty rock critic behavior on my part. Obviously, fueled by this dopey idea in that moment that I get the blues in some fundamental soulful way that the Mike's hard lemonade lady does not. bullshit, obviously. But I just want you to have all the facts, or I guess all the feelings. The greatness of the first 10 seconds of Give Me One Reason illustrates a core Tracy Chapman proposition. These elegant, beautiful, warm, compact, incredibly lifelike little guitar riffs.

Do do do do do do that you absorb into your bloodstream within 10 seconds the first time you hear them and you remember them fondly for the rest of your life. And sometimes it's just chords. You know, four simple and bright and familiar chords that she makes her own, that she somehow transforms into a classic Tracy Chapman riff. Very few people who have ever walked the earth can do this, can play four chords. You've heard 50 billion times apiece and make them sound like their chords. Make these chords sound brand new and radical and revolutionary. Tom Petty comes to mind.

Tom Petty did that a lot. But like, if I pulled out a guitar right now, I'm not going to do this. Don't worry. If I pulled out a guitar and played G, C, E, minor, and D, you'd be like, yeah. So, but that's not your reaction when Tracy Chapman does it. So here, Tracy Chapman invents the chords G, C, E, minor, and D. She invents this chord progression, but also somehow she invents the individual chords themselves.

These chords now have a life force, a backstory, a soul, a purpose. Their purpose is to animate a Tracy Chapman song called Talking About a Revolution. Don't you know, talking about a revolution sounds. And the way she whispers the line like a whisper. If I sang this song at an open mic night and I whispered the line like a whisper, it would sound mad corny, right? And you'd get angry and you'd throw your chair at me. and you would be justified in doing so.

But when Tracy Chapman whispers like a whisper, it is necessary. It is profound. It is revolutionary. You know one thing Tracy Chapman and I do have in common? Tracy Chapman was born in Cleveland, Ohio. That's right. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

When Tracy was four years old, her parents got divorced. So Tracy and her older sister grew up with their mom, Hazel Chapman. in Cleveland. Talking to Rolling Stone for a cover story in 1988, Tracy says her mother didn't ask for any alimony payments from her ex-husband and worked a series of low-paying jobs and spent time on welfare.

Tracy says, there wasn't much to work with. We always had food to eat and a place to stay, but it was a fairly bare bones kind of thing, end quote. I shouldn't get too cocky about this Cleveland thing. There's an extremely funny scene in that Rolling Stone cover story where Tracy's playing a show in Cleveland.

And famously, Tracy's not much for Stage Banner, right? But on stage, she says, this is the first time I've ever played my music publicly in Cleveland and the crowd goes wild. And then she says, I have to say, honestly, I don't have any fond memories of this place. That's

funny. That's extremely funny. Tracy played a little ukulele as a kid and by the time she was eight years old, she'd started writing songs on guitar. She said she was inspired to pick up a guitar after watching one of her mother's favorite TV shows, the long-running goofball country variety show, he-haw. This is four country bumpkin guys, including Roy Clark, the host and rad country music

guitarist Roy Clark, in matching overalls holding comically oversized moonshine jugs. And there's a big old floppy ear dogo just chilling on stage. and also there's a laugh track. Great song, honestly. I loved he-haw as a kid. Tracy and I have that in common as well. He-ha was an excellent match to my comic sensibility when I was a kid. And also now, the wife goes, the cat ate my cassero.

And the husband goes, that's okay. We can always get another cat. That's funny. That's good shit. I tried to find the audio of that he-ha joke and I couldn't, but I did find a YouTube video titled He-Haw Dick Joke. Is that of any interest? Sure it is.

What book did you read for your homework? Moby Richard, teacher. Moby Richard? You mean Moby Dick, don't you? Well, I didn't study it well enough to get that familiar with him. Not bad, right? I didn't search for he-haw dick joke, just to clarify. I'm not some weirdo. This came up organically.

We cast a wide net on this show, research-wise. Not a deep net necessarily, but a wide one. It warms my heart to learn that Tracy Chapman watched He-Haul, and she liked all the cool, decorative guitars, and she decides to play guitar herself. Young Tracy gets a scholarship to attend boarding school at a place called the Worcester School in Danbury, Connecticut. My editor, Justin Sales, flagged this and said that Danbury is the Cleveland of Connecticut. Make a note of it. She played songs. She wrote songs.

She practiced guitar constantly and unprompted. Some faculty and fellow students actually raised money to buy. Tracy a better guitar her freshman year. Tracy's senior yearbook quote came from the poet Nikki Giovanni, and the quote was, there is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world, I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary,

and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair, and disrespect, end quote. That strikes me as a slightly more poetic way of saying, don't allow the fact that other people have been assholes to you to make you into a better and abusive person. Tracy goes to college at Tufts University in Boston. She majors in anthropology. She writes songs.

She writes most of the songs that will later comprise her first, three albums. Plus, give me one reason from her fourth album. She busts, she plays coffee shops, she amasses a sizable local following. She attracts the attention of a classmate named Brian Copleman. Brian tells his dad Charles Copleman, who is a publishing company. Tracy is skeptical, but eventually she takes a publishing deal and, after graduating college, a record deal. Brian Copleman is now a famous screenwriter. He co-wrote the scripts for Rounders and Ocean's 13, and he's the co-creator of that show Billions on Showtime. All my co-workers at the Ringer love Billions.

He's been on other Ringer podcasts. It's super reductive to say Brian discovered Tracy Chapman or anything like that, but I might get fired if I don't mention him. So shout out Brian. Tracy Chapman's debut album called Tracy Chapman. It comes out in 1988 and hits number one and sells six million copies in America. And okay, Fast Car is a major reason for that, but it ain't the only reason. in the world bed lines

crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation Tracy Chapman's first album opens with the song Talking About a Revolution which feels like a classic the first time you hear it There's something so striking to me about the phrasing of that line crying in the doorsteps of those armies of salvation She just took the Salvation army and switched the words around

But this word virtuoso I think I grew up thinking of virtuosos those. I grew up conflating virtuosity with like super ostentatious fanciness, right? A virtuoso guitarist plays a ton of notes and wacky chords and whatnot. A virtuoso lyricist just dumps a ton of $200 words on you, et cetera. Every time I catch myself wanting to describe a Tracy Chapman song or line or chord progression as simple, I hesitate, right? But legitimately, what makes her a virtuoso? What makes her an all-timer is a certain grace, a lucidity, a straightforwardness. She's not trying to trick you. She calls a song talking about a revolution because she's talking about a revolution.

She talks about the people crying in the doorways of these armies of salvation because those are the people who will lead the revolution. And if you personally are on the wrong side of that revolution, then she sings the chorus, don't you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, because you had better better do that. This concept of you running, depending on what you're up to, reoccurs on a song about racial segregation called Across the Lines. She means what she says.

She says what she means. There is always something to do. When Tracy Chapman sings a heartbreaking a cappella song called Behind the Wall, she is singing about the physical wall, separating her apartment from the apartment next door and the domestic abuse that she hears, that she witnesses through that apartment wall. Last night I heard the screaming loud voices behind the wall. Another sleepless night for me.

Later, when Tracy Chapman toured with the first Lilith Fair in 1997, she'd open her set with this song, Acapella, walking on stage as she sang. And I was not lucky and or smart enough to witness this in person. But I imagine that this was the sort of live experience that had transformed you, that had baptized you, that it radicalize you. She'd then close her Lilith Fair set with talking about a revolution. and by then, I suspect, you'd be ready to join it. It won't do no good to call the police. Always come late if they come at all.

She sings this song called Why with a question mark because she's got a bunch of questions she wants the answers to. Why do the baby starve? There's enough food to feed the world. Or why are the missiles called peacekeepers? when they're aimed to kill. She sings a song called Mountains O Things. That's Mountains, capital, oh, apostrophe, things.

Because she dreams about owning mountains of things, but she knows that only people born with nothing know the true value of anything. But because the political is personal and the personal is political, she also sings a song called Baby Can I Hold You? Because that's another question she wants the answer to. This song, Baby Can I Hold You?

this is the song Nikki Minaj tried to sample a couple years back and Tracy Chapman won letter and Nikki got pissed and Tracy sued Nikki and won and Nikki's fans got pissed the barbs got pissed at Tracy Chapman and stay the hell out of it. There ought to be a Tracy Chapman song called The Internet was a mistake about how the Internet was a mistake.

This person is famous now. Fast Car is a top 10 single. Tracy Chapman is a chart topping album. Tracy plays a legendary set at Wembley Arena. in June 1988 is part of Nelson

Mandela's 70th birthday celebration. She plays her own little set and then

she plays a couple songs later filling in last minute for Stevie Wonder who's

having equipment problems. And that's where Tracy plays fast car. And this

very famous live performance is the mirror image of the Grammy's performance.

At the Grammys, you cry and she almost cries because of the warm bursts of

applause. Here at Wembley Stadium, you cry, and she almost cries because she reduces a crowd of 70,000 to instant wrapped near silence.

Any places better. Starting from zero got nothing to lose. Maybe we'll make something. Me, myself, I got nothing to prove. The lone whistler was ejected, I assume. Me myself, I got nothing to prove. Tracy Chapman is famous now. She has a tremendous power, a plain spoken nobility, an uncommon importance, a righteousness to her. In 1989, she puts out her second album, Crossroads. She sings a song called Freedom Now because she wants it. She sings a song called Material World because she's mostly against it. She sings a song called Be Careful of My Heart because she'd like you to do that. She sings a song called All that you have is your soul because that's all that she has. and she sings a song called Born to Fight because she was.

But even this is somewhat reductive, right, to grant no space between Tracy Chapman, the songwriter, and Tracy Chapman, the human. Tracy isn't much for stage banter. As her career progresses, Tracy doesn't care much for interviews. Tracy is reticent to discuss her sexuality, or really to discuss her life in any detail. Rolling Stone in 1988 asks her if her songs have confessional moments.

And she says, There are emotions I felt, but not always things I've been through. Rolling Stone asks if her songs about obsessive and dangerous love are close to her life. And she says, no, not necessarily. I won't get into it any more than to say that there are parts of me in all the songs that I write. End quote. What you hear in a Tracy Chapman song is what you get. But that doesn't mean that what you get is any sort of intimate glimpse into Tracy Chapman's personal life.

You're better off thinking of her as a deified mirage. And she's definitely better off. In 1992, Tracy puts out her third album called Matters of the Heart. And there's a song about gun violence called Bang, Bang, Bang. And the song about a woman's work called Woman's Work. And the song about the environment called Short Supply, where she sings about how sunny days and blue sky guys are in short supply. And a song called Open Arms about how

shall comfort you with open arms. And this is the one I can't get over, man. There's that guitar riff, first of all, which joins the pantheon of elegant, beautiful, warm, compact, incredibly lifelike little Tracy Chapman guitar riffs. It's a lovely little echo of Fleetwood Mac's gypsy. Isn't it?

Maybe. Do do, do, do, do. But then there's just the astounding, graceful, lucid, straightforward power of Tracy Chapman singing, I'm right here, I'll be right here, I'll embrace you. Tracy Chapman's second and third albums do not sell six million copies apiece. They do not flop in any sense, but it is clear she is not going to chase superstardom. She is not going to accede to the invasive tabloid-ass demands of celebrities. She is not going to be vulnerable and available as a public figure at the demeaning level required to sustain the superstardom she has already attained.

And then in 1995 she puts out her fourth album called New Beginning. And she has another bonkers hit song. This one called Give Me One Reason. And once again, what you hear is what you get. I don't want to leave you lonely. You gotta make me change my mind. Is this a song about Tracy Chapman asking us to give her a reason to keep on being celebrity pop star Tracy Chapman? No, probably not.

But it's fun to pretend like maybe it is. Isn't it? Up to this point, there's not a whole hell of the lot binding Tracy Chapman musically to the late 80s and early 90s. This is a songwriter, a folk singer. She is classic. She is quote unquote timeless. She can evoke the 60s in the 70s and beyond. Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Kat Stevens, James Taylor, Suzanne Vega, she unifies.

She simultaneously embodies the earliest times and the latest. But by this new beginning record, by the mid-90s, context has grown around her. She has helped create the world that best suits her. That means the Lilith Fair, yes, which will launch in 1997 and could not really have launched without her. And however reductive and stupid women in rock is, as a marketing scheme, there is a legitimate universe sketched out in the first Lilith Fair lineup. Sarah McLaughlin, Jewel, the Indigo girl, Cheryl Crowe, Fiona Apple, Emmylou Harris, Tracy, and on and on. This is not the revolution Tracy originally sang about. And it certainly does not always arrive as a whisper, but she's got

company worthy of her. Meanwhile, by 1995, you've also got got VH1. You've got blockbuster rootsy pop of both the Bonnie Raid variety and the Hootie and the Blowfish variety. It is an opportune time for Tracy to mind meld with a full bluesy band. I just said it again. It is an opportune time for Tracy to co-produce with Don Gaiman who'd worked with both John Mellon Camp and Hootie and the Blowfish. 1995 is an opportune moment for Tracy to project both youthful vigor and old soul type spiritual exhaustion. I said there's a youthful heart can love you. These are the true killer lines on Give Me One Reason, right?

These are the lines that read totally different when you're 44 years old than not 14. These are the lines that read totally different now that hopefully you're a little more adept at figuring out how the idea of winning and losing fits in your relationships. old to go chasing you around wasting my precious and the day the band's playing episode about Tracy Chapman

is required listening of course so is the Tracy Chapman podcast called what else talking about Tracy Chapman which once interviewed bassist Andy Stoller

who toured with Tracy and played on this album and this song Andy points out that give me one reason gets very subtly faster as it goes on the tempo doesn't fluctuate

so much as it just increases as Tracy gets more insistent, more youthful, more convinced that you are, in fact, wasting her precious energy. This album is going to do it for Tracy in the 90s, but she'll be back in 2000 with a record called Telling Stories, then three more albums, and then, since 2008, nothing.

Very little, very little until the Grammys, very recently. And it is tempting to advocate for a full-blown Tracy Chapman Renaissance, for a triumphant comeback tour, for a never-ending victory lap. I would love to hear Tracy Chapman sing behind the wall live and sing open arms live. And sure, sing fast car and give me one reason live. But I would especially like to hear Tracy sing the promise live. Another jam from new beginning. Another simple and graceful and unspeakably lovely guitar riff.

Another bracing reminder that vulnerability and empathy are the most powerful forces in the universe. If you wait for me, then I'll come for you. That's all you need to hear from the promise, actually, to know or to be reminded that the promise kicks ass. We waited for her and she came. And it's tempting to ask Tracy Chapman to stay here now that she's here again. I want Tracy playing the promise at the Oscars. You don't got to nominate her for anything. It's fine.

I want Tracy doing open arms at next year's Grammys. I want Tracy Chapman getting slimed while playing. Give me one reason at the next Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, if those are still a thing. But I strongly suspect that Tracy does not want to do any of that. The getting slime part especially, but really all of it. Tracy's privacy. her reticence, her absence, her hallowed position above the fray, she has earned this. Enjoy her while she's back in the public eye, but understand that from all appearances,

she's far happier when she's not, because you don't have to miss her when she's gone. Because if you want, you can imagine her singing, wherever somebody's struggling to be free, look in their eyes, Ma, you'll see me, you'll see me, you'll see me but tracy of course put it another way Tracy always found a better way to put it said I told you that I loved you and there ain't no more to say we are so honored to welcome back Hanif Abdurakib

author poet podcaster and first ballot member of the Ohio Hall of Fame his next book There's Always this year on basketball and Ascension is out in March and is available for pre-order now Hanif, welcome back. Thank you for having me. It's really good to be here. Good to see you, too. Good to see you. You are from Ohio. I am from Ohio. Tracy Chapman is from Ohio. I thought we could start by discussing just the greatness, the superiority of people from Ohio. What makes us so special, do you think?

Well, I think writers from Ohio are observant. Tony Morrison are the greatest writer from Ohio. I think the greatest writer who's ever lived has talked a great deal. when she was alive talked a great deal about the observational qualities that come with a kind of a stillness or an imagination that grows out of stillness. And I'm not saying there's nothing to do in Ohio. Obviously, we know that to be not true. There's plenty to do here for better or worse. Sure. But there is a kind of pace to the living in the Midwest that parts of the Midwest, because the Midwest is vast and multifaceted. But in this part of Midwest, I do think there's an observational quality, which is why I think so many great poets come out of the state. And I don't just mean poets in terms of like people who write poems.

I also mean poets who are, you know, invested in kind of the oral tradition, or poets who just happen to write songs, which, you know, Tracy Chapman is among the best. And so, you know, there's a reason why I think there's a great legacy in the age of writers that come out of Ohio. It's all about kind of noticing and asking people if they can walk alongside you and notice the things you notice with some clarity. Yeah, because I was going to ask you, you know, what aspect of Tracy Chapman's writing struck you as particularly, like, Midwestern or Ohio, and it's the observational thing.

It's just sort of looking around and seeing things that other people don't see because you don't have as much to do as people in New York or Los Angeles. Right, or at least you don't have to contend with, you maybe have as much to do, but you're going about your doing it a different way, right? You perhaps don't have to contend with the noise, say, the kind of New York is a heavily populated place and not just density of human bodies. It's also a densely populated place in terms of just sound, like the volume of the place. And it moves at a pace that requires you perhaps being aware of your surroundings, which is great, this kind of hypervigilance. But there's also, you know, I go about my days in Columbus with a kind of slowness that allows me to be.

hypervigilant of these smaller movements. And Tracy Chapman is so good at taking a very small moment and expanding upon it. And she's also really good at narrating and expanding upon a small moment, you know, or a small desire. You know, like, baby, can I hold you tonight? It's just like a plea, a repeated plea that gets stretched out again and again and again and again. Right. I was thinking about give me one reason through this prism.

There's just such a serenity to it, right? There's just a lot of space. you know, sonically and emotionally, I guess. Yeah, she's really good as a writer at kind of two modes of writing, I think. One, she's either good at carving out a sense of calm that is really rooted in, I think, fear and anxiety of losing a moment or a moment slipping away. Or she's really good at carving out something that sounds like calm, but it's actually this distorted kind of chaos, you know, or it's like, you know,

or this kind of a tension that's wrestling underneath what otherwise to some may feel like calm. So you think that a lot of her songs are sort of deceptively serene in that way. Yeah, because you think like if you think about a song like

behind the wall, which is one of my favorite Tracy Chapman songs in terms of just narration and storytelling, the approach in how the song is presented sonically, it is, you know, it's like mostly Acapella or maybe entirely Acapella.

And it's also kind of repetitive. It kind of like lulls you to sleep. But there's this thing that happens in maybe the second hook where the tone shifts or the lyrics shift in the narration shifts where it goes like, I heard the screaming and then there was silence. Right. So the introduction of silence, which she does so well. She introduces through these repetitions, she kind of lulls you into a place that feels

like you know what's coming. but even just the insertion of like I heard screaming and then I heard silence and then I think I saw an ambulance coming. And then she kind of goes back to, you know what I mean? Like these kind of, so yeah, that song kind of lonesy with the calmness, but there's a real terror being described. One reason I love talking to you is just the poet brain, right? I was going to ask you, you know, as a poet, you know, what do you love about her songwriting? Like what makes her special. Perspective.

Her use of her use of shifting perspectives as a way to sharpen a narrative or to, you know, the real, I actually just taught this. I'm doing like a, I did like a one week workshop at Denison

and I taught, I teach Fast Car. I teach Fast Car like it's a text. Like it is because in my mind it is. Because the real trick of Fast Car, which raises, I think, the stakes of the story is what happens.

You know, the first two verses are like, she's dealing in. in you and I. It's like you, you've got a fast car. The speaker is speaking to their beloved or the person they are at least tied to.

And then this really cool thing happens in the third verse where she kind of breaks the fourth wall and turns to the listeners. It's kind of like, listen, my old man had this problem. This is the way I came up. This is what I had to deal with. And then we don't actually get to really reckon with that.

That doesn't get reconciled. She just kind of turns back to the story. But in turning back to that story, we actually have a clear understanding of her relationship with this current man. So we understand, or at least, you know, or this current person, at least. And we actually understand why the speaker is the way she is. We understand why the speaker feels beholden to this kind of brutal optimism that against all odds

might present a better world, even though everything is suggesting that it will not, because we understand what the speaker's relationship with her father was. And we understand even if, even or perhaps the fact that that was not resolved for, for us makes it clear that this is a person who is almost just driven by an empty optimism, which is also why fast car kind of ends the way it does. Another thing I love about Tracy Chapman is that, as a poet, is that she's not very interested in resolution at all. You know, that's another, you know, Springsteen is like that.

And, you know, everyone knows I adore Springsteen. And, you know, we talked about behind the wall, that song doesn't end with a resolution at all. It's just like the police aren't coming. You know what I mean? Like, you call the cops if you won't. Yeah, it begins with like, I still can't sleep and I'm not going to call the cops because they're not showing up, you know? And that is, I adore a writer who is not very interested in resolution, but is willing to lay out the stakes of why an emotional or real, very real dilemma not being resolved would be bad.

And then it just leaves you with the reality of the badness. Right. When you teach Fast Car to college kids now, what is their relationship with the song? Are you introducing it? Do they already love it? And you're helping them see it in a new way? It's actually this time out.

I mean, I plan to do this every time I'm in a classroom. But this time out, it just kind of happened to align because of the Grammy performance. Sure, of course. And so that was not planned. But it was a little bit more exciting, I think, this time. So usually some of them know it. You know, it's ubiquitous enough. And it has been covered enough times.

So I think I'm helping them to see it in a new way. But this time out, it was like a lot of excitement because, you know, I think I walked into the classroom like a day after the Grammy performance. And so it was kind of like, all right, well, you know, good time to talk about this. And it's all about perspective. I mean, that kind of workshop thought model is all about how we approach you I versus we versus us versus my, you know, how do you break the fore? How do you kind of like do the fourth wall breaking, which fast car does so well?

I really can't remember a moment like Tracy Chapman at the Grammys. Like that sense anyway that like everyone watching was like crying. Everyone loved this. Everyone loved seeing her again. Like what do you think it was about that moment or about her that made everyone react so warmly to this? Yeah, I don't know. I didn't watch it. I didn't watch it.

I don't watch the Grammys. I feel bad. I don't feel bad about this. No, you should not feel bad. should feel superior to me and other people. But I did watch the clip a couple days later. I think it's the reality of, you know, we're witnessing a person who, well,

Tracy Chapman became less in the public eye when I think a lot of people felt she still had a lot to give, right? And she has been reclusive. She's been a recluse for so long. And she is now older. She's now almost 60. She'll be 60 in like a month. Right.

And that isn't, to be clear, 60 is not, you know, she's not like being, we're not trying to walk Tracy Chapman to her early grave, you know. But at the same time, she hasn't had a record come out since 2008. She hasn't really had a lot of public performances since then. And an interesting thing about Tracy Chapman is that I think her absence from the public eye hasn't really built this kind of sometimes this happens with people. In that absence, you fill it in with all these mythologies and all these kind of, that hasn't really happened with Tracy Chapman, at least not to a degree that is like hyper mythological. And I think what's actually grown in the place is just really plain affection, like just really plain gratitude. And, you know, there's mentioned, like, you know, Tracy Chapman, I think the first two albums are really great, really, really great. Some of the ones after it are less so.

Some of the ones after it, you know, like whatever. at this point, I am of the belief, personally, that if you make an album like her debut record, and even I'll say an album like Crossroads, I kind of don't really care what else you make. You know, you've done anything else you make is a... I don't mean... I don't mean I don't care as then I'm not going to listen.

I just mean like anything else good is a bonus. You know, like, fuck it. Stevie Wonder, after Stevie Wonder made songs in The Key of Life, he could have made like 10 versions of metal machine music, and I would have just been like, cool, you know what I mean? Yes, I'm with it. And so I think, Tracy Chapman's contributions to the musical landscape happened in this like really,

or the contributions that she's most adored for, happened in this really short bursts of time, like 88, 89, 90. And they feel so far away, but they've really resonated for a while. And I also think that her performing fast car was someone who had repopularized it to a degree that people felt somewhat strange about, I think. you know, her being on stage and maybe reclaiming a part of the song that was hers. Of course. Even though that wasn't an explicit thing and even though she wasn't like enraged and snatching the song back.

And it seemed like, you know, it seemed like Luke Combs was maybe like, you know, it's Luke Combs, right? That's who did this. Yes, yes. And he was reverent. He knew how important this was. So it didn't seem like there was that tension. But I think this idea of, you know, this song got big again.

due to someone coming in and covering it as she was out of the spotlight. And then that person in that song got praised that she was not present for or she chose to not be present for. And her choosing to return and at least bask in some of that praise, I think, was just really monumental. You know, like a lot of artists, they get this kind of, they get these kind of flowers, these specific kind of flowers after they're gone. And, you know, Tracy Chapman is someone who, for all intents and purposes, has been. been to some degree gone, not dead gone, but gone from our public view. And for her to kind of, you know, stand in that and step up in that was really beautiful to see. Do you think we hear her music differently because she's been gone? You know, if she was on Twitter all day, every day,

do you think that car would be? Sorry to put that thought into the world. What would, Tray, I can't imagine the type shit Tracy Chapman be tweeting about. Yeah, yeah. My hope is that if Tracy Chapman she would have to be tweet. The only way that Tracy Chapman on Twitter would be great to me is if she was just tweeting stuff that we would never believe. Like if she was just like live tweeting like Real Housewives of Atlanta. Yeah, yeah. She's a big Knicks fan.

Like she's like sending Tyrae, angry Tyraise to the Knicks Twitter account. I don't know. You know, like I do think that's a tough thing because I do think a part of, you know what, I think Fast Car would. endure no matter what. I think it's just one of those songs. But I also think a part of the legacy of the Tracy Chapman debut album especially is the fact that she has been out of the public eye for so long. And we're just kind of so far removed. I mean, for me, that's one of the great

debut albums of all time. You know, like for me, that's, I don't have a number, but if I'm, if I'm thinking about my top 20 debut albums of all time, that's going to be one of them. I don't have an order, but it's going to be in there. And we're so far removed from that, that I think as long as she wasn't, you know, as long as she didn't go down the path of becoming like a black, white supremacist, I think that we would, you know, the adoration for her would remain high, you know. So I don't know if we listen differently. I do think that because she's so reclusive, and even when she's public, she's not very public about her private life. And this is also why I think her

writing is so interesting because she does write from the standpoint of the eye a lot. Like, I hear this, I see this. Like she's writing from the standpoint of the eye, but it's so much of, I always tell young poets, for example, you can write from the standpoint of the eye

and then separate yourself by saying, well, the person in the poem, even though we're using the I pronoun, that's the speaker. The speaker in the poem is not myself. It's maybe a funhouse version of myself, but it's not myself. Tracy Chapman really lives that out

Whereas like the eye that appears in her songs is so far removed from. And she doesn't even have to say that. Like we just understand that the eye, the speaker is not the person. And so there's such a grand divide between what we understand of Tracy Chapman, the human being and what the speakers in her songs are doing that I actually don't know if we would listen to her any differently. I see a lot of discourse about like there's not a lot of pronouns in Tracy Chapman's songs. Obviously there's all this like tabloid type interest in her sexuality or whatever.

But I think maybe she understands that implicitly, maybe she doesn't. But like there's not a lot of clues to her real life, you know, to her real relationships in these songs, even though there is all this I, I, I, I. Yeah. And you like, you know, maybe can I hold you? I think it's like a gender, the U is genderless, right? It's, um, right? These kind, even fast car. That's why I, So even in fact, I think a fast car, the impulses to be like, this is definitely a man because we're drawing these parallels between father and current. But we actually don't know that for sure. I don't think I'd have to. We don't.

We don't. Off top of my head, I don't think we know that, right? And so there's a, there's a real, to me, I assume intention. Another thing, not to like give you the rundown of how I do my writing workshops all during this one interview. But a thing I always, I always tell writers is as if somebody brings a poem into the workshop, we need to assume intention. And so if someone has a, it doesn't matter, someone has a word misspelled or if someone has a line that's sideways, we're going to assume that's intentional.

And so like I assume intention all the time because I think it's, you honor writers, you honor writers by saying, I believe that you know what the fuck you're doing. You know what I mean? Like I believe that everything you do, if it gets to this stage, you knew what you were doing.

So I think for me, and I have no interest in speculating on Tracy Chapman's sexuality, but I will say I think the lack of gendered pronouns, especially in love songs for her, that's an intentional move. At least I'm going to honor that as an intentional move. Right. I agree with you about the debut standing apart, but did give me one reason resonate with you in real time? I do like the new beginning record a lot.

It's a very different sound. You know, but I just, did you know, listening to give me one reason on the radio constantly in the mid-90s? Did you have a sense already that like this is a song and this is a person who will be revered? the way that she's revered, you know, 30 years later? I did only because, you know, give me one reason. You know, give me one reason is probably what her second most famous song? Yes.

I would maybe. I don't know about chart success, but I feel like... It was a bigger chart hit. It is obviously, you know, Fast Car stands apart, I think, historically, but it was a bigger hit in real time. I love the structure of a give me run reason. I love that it kind of accumulates in frustration. You know, where it's like, lyrically, we get this kind of accumulation of, it really feels like a relationship that's crumbling, you know, or a relationship where someone doesn't want it to crumble and they're trying to their best to.

But I remember, you know, 95 was for me like a heyday of college radio, which was a real blessing to live in a college town. And I had older siblings who were at college. And I just listened to college radio all the time as a kid. And it was on all the time. And the miracle of college radio was that you weren't beholden. to any kind of programming structure. It was just like straight up some motherfucker in a studio playing like whatever they wanted to hear. And so you would hear, and you would hear give me one reason sandwich in between like Wu-Tang and,

you know, Bikini Kill or Black Flag. So it was this thing that for me felt, and again, I was what, 12 or whatever, 13 and I was 12, 11, 12. It did feel to me unique because it really felt like this was a song that everyone, like, the way I measured this kind of thing was if everyone in my house, household liked it because I was in a household of people who all loved music, but who all had different tastes. But everyone in my household liked it and everyone in my friend's household liked it. And so it was not only a hit that felt large. And I had really no scope of Tracy

Chapman's cultural largeness at that point. I knew a fast car to, I knew Fast Car to, I knew the debut album. I knew Crossroads because my sister loved that record. But give me one reason, felt like this kind of, I mean, it was just everywhere. And it was also everywhere at an interesting time because that single, if I'm not mistaken, it didn't come out to like the fall. I'm just like, I don't know why I feel this way, but I don't have it in front of you.

I'm pretty sure that single came out in the fall. And so it was everywhere like in school for me as a middle school. And that also felt, yeah, that felt different because like on the bus, you know, you heard on the radio on the bus, but also it was like in the headphones of kids sometimes, you know? Right. I have a vague memory of you telling a story about you were curating something,

maybe like a BAM event or series, and like you were trying to get Tracy Chapman and you wrote her a letter. You know, did I hallucinate this or did this actually happen? No, this happened. So, I mean, one thing that's real is that I'm big on just expressions of gratitude. And I think largely for writers, like if I read a book I love, I generally my first step is like how do I get a hold of this writer? And so I could just email him and say

thank you for this. It doesn't matter if we know each other or whatever. But musicians, I, you know, I'm also like that. And so I curated this music series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2022. And in the process of building this series out, it was kind of like, who can we get?

That kind of. We were racking our brains on who can we get. And at that, you know, we didn't need any. We were pretty stacked. I mean, that series was, you know, we had Moses Sumney. We had Mdu Moktar. We had fucking Mavis staples, you know what I mean? Like we really put together a whole thing. And so I was kind of feeling confident.

I was like, I want to take a big swing and see if we could get, at least I love Tracy Chapman. Like Tracy Chapman means so much to me. She is my, if not for Tony Morrison, Tracy Chapman would be, I think, my favorite Ohio writer, not songwriter. I mean, literal writer of language. Right. And so she is second, in my mind, she is the second greatest Ohio writer. And the person above her is the greatest writer to ever live.

And, you know, I had heard that, you know, everything pointed to the reality that she wasn't, you know, was like she will not do this probably. But I heard, you know, it was kind of like, maybe she should just write her a letter, write her a letter and just see. And so, yeah, I wrote Tracy Chapman, maybe a three-page letter, you know, breaking down not only how much I really loved and respected her craft as a writer, but also, you know, what her music meant as kind of a bridge between me and my mother. Like my mother loved her music and I loved her music because my mother loved her music and I wrote to her about what her writing meant to me as a writer. Like really, I learned from her writing. I learned how to build out effective narratives and how to storytell and in these really useful and effective ways. And I just really, at that point, I remember getting halfway through the letter and kind of being like, I don't actually care if she comes to do this thing at BAM or not. I'm just, I feel a sense of gratitude that I, yeah, that I want to express.

So of course she did not. I sent the letter off. She, of course, did not come to do the thing at BAM. But I'm not giving up hope. I mean, you know, it would, you know, she doesn't seem, I've again, like, you know, I've kind of reached out to folks to see if I could get her to do a profile at the New Yorker with me. She's just not interested, you know, and I respect that. There's a part of me that's like, I respect what it is to be, you know, my goal is to one day

be an artist who can be reclusive and not do anything or talk to anyone. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's a real, you know. that's a real goal of mine. You know, I don't want to, I don't want to be like J.D. Salinger, maybe.

I don't want to be that level of, you know. So I do respect, I want to respect Tracy Chapman's desire to not be in, you know, whatever, whatever satisfaction she is finding in her own personal private world that she is maybe not finding in the outer world. I want to have that, you know, I want her to cherish that. But I also do, you know, most of that letter was saying, if ever a time comes, then, you know, I hope that, you know, you will consider maybe, maybe we'll do something that collaboratively, be it you play a show and I watch an awe or, you know, we talk for a profile or whatever. What would you want to know from her?

Like, what would you ask her, you know, what would you ideally get from talking to her? You know what? I think I have, most of my questions would be about her craft. her writing. But I also, again, I'm not really interested. I know that people have a lot of more salacious questions. I'm not really interested in that part. I'm interested in the kind of how she, you know, how she crafted, how she became the writer

she became, how she cultivated the skill that she has. I want to ask her about growing up in Ohio and what she saw and how that allowed her to see the world. And mostly I'd be interested in asking What about the world dissatisfies her? Because I do think that retreat doesn't always come from dissatisfaction It sometimes comes from again, like being more satisfied In the privacy of your own, yeah, total satisfaction.

So I would want to know on what side of the fence she falls, on what side of the satisfaction fence she falls. Right, right. Is there a deep cut, you know, an album track, A lesser-known Tracy Chamin song that sort of means a lot to you. Like, this is a catalog, I think, that really rewards someone's time and attention, you know. Behind the wall is a, is a fantastic example.

But is there any other, you know, sort of deeper cut that's with you. Behind the wall is good. I would say, on let it rain, there's a song called Say Hallelujah, which is like not long. It's like two minutes long. But it's, again, very repetitive. And it's just kind of like, I love a gospely song that gives into the reality that people might live in an afterlife where you can walk towards them. You know, when you are gone, you will find someone who was also gone before you. And say hallelujah is kind of that.

You know, it's like a, it's like it's not a dirge. It's a funeral song for sure. You know, the lyrics are like, say hallelujah, throw up your hands. The bucket is kicked. The body is gone. But it ends, again, she's so good at these late twists and these late twists where it's like, we're all going to be there on the other side and we'll see you again. And there's this, I love that song. I love that song so much.

I think Let It Rain is kind of a cool record, you know, of her post-2000 stuff. That's the record that resonates the most of me and say hallelujah is a real gem of a song, I think. This has been so fantastic. It's always been so great talking to you. always appreciated your time and it's it's been awesome to talk to you again man. Rob, it's great, man. I appreciate it. I love the 60 songs book and I love, I just love how much how much attention you're given to just single songs and the history of songs. That's just, it's like right up my alley and you're doing it so, you're doing it so well. So thank you for

letting me be a small part of it. Well, that means a lot of coming from you, man. Thanks so much. No doubt. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Hanif Abdurokeb. Thanks very much to our producers Jonathan Kerma and Justin Sales. Thanks to Chloe Clark for additional production help, and thanks very much to you for listening. And now I suggest you go listen to Give Me One Reason by Tracy

Chapman. We'll see you next week.