PicoBlog

Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” is topping the country charts, prompting the obligatory discourse over what it means for a white man to find success with a Black woman’s song. I don’t know why I torment myself like this, but I read the Washington Post’s article and spotted something odd:

“I think the song in general is pretty reflective for a lot of people who do identify as queer, and also for a person of color — the song almost seems like an anthem for us,” Davenport said.

??? I had never heard the queer interpretation, but I looked it up, and apparently lesbians have been claiming the song for years.

Trish Bendix: “The way Chapman sings about a genderless couple leaving town to find a home in a city nearby is something all queer people can relate to. We’ve always felt the need to relocate if we wanted to find other gay people―San Francisco, New York, Chicago.”

Angelica Cabral: “Take, for example, ‘Fast Car,’ in which Chapman speaks to the experience of being from a smaller town and dreaming of leaving it behind for the big city where queer freedom and safety supposedly reign.”

Francesca T. Royster: “But those of us with our gaydar activated knew what we knew. For many, "Fast Car" felt like a lesbian anthem, a desire to escape from small town drudgery and heteronormative life.”

Other articles point out Chapman avoids pronouns, so the speaker’s lover could be a man or a woman. They insinuate she kept it vague because the 1980s were not gay friendly... or maybe because the song is not about lesbians at all.

Consider the lyrics:

 You got a fast car I got a job that pays all our bills You stay out drinking late at the bar See more of your friends Than you do of your kids

You could tell a convoluted story about the speaker’s bisexual lover having children from a previous man/woman relationship. Or maybe they used a sperm bank to conceive despite obviously lacking the funds (“You still ain’t got a job. I work at the market as a checkout girl.”), somehow failing to realize babies would hinder their plans to start new lives in the city. But come on.

As for Chapman, she has always maintained “Fast Car” is not autobiographical, but about the working class community in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. In 1996, Chapman was more specific and said it’s about her parents:

At the time that I wrote the song, I actually didn’t really know who I was writing about. Looking back at it, and this happens with other songs as well, that I feel like I understand it only later… I think that it was a song about my parents… And about how when they met each other they were very young and they wanted to start a new life together and my mother was anxious to leave home. My parents got married and went out into the world to try to make a place for themselves and it was very difficult going.

Of course, lesbians can relate to the song. People of all demographics know what it’s like to imagine a better life, and I’m sure “Fast Car” speaks to many gay people who feel trapped in conservative towns.

Others respond to the song because it’s a classic that takes them back. Luke Combs, a fellow Millennial, loves the song because he used to practice it on guitar with his father.

I have a specific memory of discovering “Fast Car” in my dad’s CD collection in 8th grade. I was home with a cold, binging ice cream and X-Files fan fiction, when the song came on and I really heard it for the first time. I remember blasting it over and over, just feeling things, despite having no personal experience with the song’s themes.

It’s just a great song. Unique, catchy, and moving. We can say lesbians love this song. Lesbians connect to this song. But we don’t need to claim it’s secretly about lesbians, especially when this interpretation erases working-class straight women like Chapman’s mother, women who almost never find representation in popular music.

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