The best moment at this year’s Grammy Awards came when country music star Luke Combs performed his version of “Fast Car” with the song’s writer, Tracy Chapman. The bearlike 34-year-old Carolinian appeared bowled over singing along with his childhood heroine, and the famously shy Chapman finally seemed able to enjoy the crowd’s admiration as Taylor Swift stood up to dance.
Filled out with fiddle and mandolin, Combs’s faithful cover took the 1988 hit to No 2 on the Billboard chart last year. It was then named song of the year by the Country Music Association in November, with Chapman becoming the first Black woman ever to receive the prize. Along with the March release of Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter (the first album by a Black woman to top the country albums chart), the Combs-Chapman duet felt like a major moment in the turning of a cultural tide that had, over the past 15 years, seen country music dominated by a white, macho culture nicknamed “Bro Country”.
