Just Duet

I was walking on a snowy trail wearing some spongy Walkman headphones the first time I heard a cassette tape playing Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. Songs often take you back to a specific moment in your life, and I’ll always remember the first time I heard that song. Luke Combs wasn’t yet born during my slow walk with Fast Car, but the same song
conjures a memory for him, too. He’s riding shotgun in a Ford F-150 and his dad pops a cassette into the tapedeck as he takes his only child for a ride through the roads of their North Carolina home town. As Combs, now a country music star explains, “It was my favorite before I knew what a favorite song was.” Both of those moments took place in what feels like a lost America, when art and culture didn’t have to cut through the static of viral, social media rage; when everything wasn’t just about politics, we weren’t so relentlessly divided, and before nonsensical takes that wouldn’t even qualify for the ‘letters to the editor’s section of a local newspaper were elevated to top story status on national cable news. During last night’s Grammy Awards, Luke Combs, now a country music star, played his number one selling cover version of Fast Car with a special guest: Tracy Chapman. It took Combs back to that Ford F-150. Maybe it took Chapman back to busking at the Harvard T Station. It took me back to that snowy walk and a different time in America. Maybe the surprise perfomance was a reminder that the American duet is still playing beneath the din, among regular people who actually interact in real life, freed from their social media silos of homogeneity. Maybe, for a second, I bought the idea that the lyrics of the song could be applied to our two Americas: Maybe we make a deal. Maybe together we can get somewhere. Whatever it was, for the duration of a song, I didn’t believe all the divisive rhetoric. I believed Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman performing Fast Car together. A great American song, a beautiful American moment.

+ Taylor Swift set a new Grammy record, Miley Cyrus was among the night’s biggest winners, Celine Dion showed up, Jay-Z criticized the Grammys for Beyoncé’s Album of the Year losses, Joni Mitchell performed, and Killer Mike got arrested after winning 3 Grammys. After being released, he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution: “I’m three Grammys good.” Same here.