"The verse melody is subtly strange, and it took me a while to figure out why": A music professor breaks down the theory and production behind Tracy Chapman's Fast Car

Tracy Chapman was thrust back in the spotlight this month following a stunning performance of her 1988 single Fast Car with Luke Combs at the Grammy Awards; the track has since bounced back into the Billboard Hot 100, 36 years after its release.

In a 1990 Time Magazine profile, Richard Stengel described Chapman’s voice as “a rich contralto that seemed to come from a hundred miles away. A sweet, sad, wise voice that haunted almost all who heard it. A voice that seemed to know things they didn’t.”