{"id":17713,"date":"2016-02-24T06:28:28","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T11:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17713"},"modified":"2016-02-24T06:28:28","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T11:28:28","slug":"midweek-music-break-tracy-chapman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/midweek-music-break-tracy-chapman\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: Tracy Chapman"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8iGz1VzgDGM?rel=0\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: &#8220;Give Me One Reason,&#8221; by Tracy Chapman, with choreography by Chris Martin and Larkin Poynton. That&#8217;s Martin and Poynton dancing, too &#8212; and only Martin and Poynton. I&#8217;d already watched this a few times before that fact hit me, and then I had to watch it a few times more.]<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">W<\/span>hen Tracy Chapman&#8217;s single &#8220;Fast Car&#8221; broke in 1988, it seemed to come out of nowhere, and suddenly was <em>everywhere<\/em>. (I could swear I remember a Muzak version.) Even so, thanks to a personal life full of complications, I paid less attention to music &#8212; including Chapman &#8212; for the next few years. By the time I started listening to stuff again, I learned that her career had zoomed (on the strength of &#8220;Fast Car&#8221; and her biggest single, &#8220;Give Me One Reason&#8221;) and then subsided in the meantime. It finally seems to have settled into something of a <em>sui generis<\/em> long-term marathon, punctuated by public appearances and likewise out-of-nowhere cover versions of her work.<\/p>\n<p>Her <em>Greatest Hits<\/em> compilation came out a few months ago. It includes remastered versions of both &#8220;Fast Car&#8221; and &#8220;Give Me One Reason,&#8221; naturally, and a live version of &#8220;Stand By Me&#8221;; the latter was recorded during Chapman&#8217;s appearance during the last week of David Letterman&#8217;s <em>Late Show<\/em>, in May 2015. (The video of that performance quickly went viral all on its own.)<\/p>\n<p>The album reminds me that there&#8217;s nothing flashy about Chapman&#8217;s songs. They&#8217;re just straight-ahead good music, highly personal and\/or deeply political as the case may be. Like Chapman herself, they give and they give, rewarding repeated listenings <em>and<\/em> reworkings, in various forms, by other performers.<\/p>\n<p>The dance routine in the above video, choreographed and performed by Chris Martin and Larkin Poynton, has nothing to do with the lyrics of &#8220;Give Me One Reason.&#8221; (When Chapman sings &#8220;Squeeze me,&#8221; for instance, the dancers don&#8217;t hug themselves or each other.) It simply celebrates the song&#8217;s <em>music<\/em>, as the vehicle &#8212; a fast car &#8212; on the roof of which the footwork, the elbow jabs, the sheer virtuosity of the performances are zipping up a highway.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">O<\/span>n the other hand, there&#8217;s that clip from the <em>Late Show<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s not the only one to cover Ben E. King&#8217;s original, of course. (One version, by a group &#8212; I guess we can call it a group, or a band? &#8212; named Playing for Change, appeared <a title=\"Earlier RAMH post: 'Stand By Me,' Worldwide\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/stand-by-me-worldwide\/\" target=\"_blank\">here on <em>RAMH<\/em><\/a> in 2008.) I imagine it&#8217;s a favorite song to cover because of the instrumental line typically underlying the vocal: lightly sprightly and insistent, it&#8217;s something like a clever teacher assigning you (<em>Right <\/em><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">now<\/span><em>, young man!<\/em>) some urgent, already-overdue task &#8212; in this case, the &#8220;work&#8221; of getting those feet tapping. (Finger-snaps, thigh-slaps, and hand-claps can be substituted for toe-taps if you can&#8217;t proceed as instructed.)<\/p>\n<p>But the vocal component &#8212; both the lyrics and the melody &#8212; must make the song attractive, too. It can serve as a love song, obviously, or a simple but heartfelt reassurance to (or plea for support <em>from<\/em>) a friend or family member. With a slight twist or slur of the words, it can even be rendered as a hymn. It doesn&#8217;t require a great vocal range; and the singer can indulge in histrionic flourishes and scat, if he or she prefers, or beatboxing, or even just a simple straight-ahead delivery, up- or downbeat as desired.<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, Chapman makes choices few other performers wold make. On the <em>Late Show<\/em> stage, in the middle of that entertaining but undeniably wistful week of late-night TV, it&#8217;s just her, her guitar, and that understated voice. Suddenly, nuances we&#8217;ve never heard in the phrasing are laid out, stark, surprising, but entirely appropriate for sending off a late-night talk-show host like Letterman: a &#8220;comedian,&#8221; nominally, and a public figure who&#8217;d undergone his share of public trials, disappointments, and resurgences, and one who&#8217;d shared some very tough times (heart surgery, 9\/11) with the audience. It&#8217;s a tribute performance for Letterman from Chapman, of course, but also (maybe) a little bit of imagined vice-versa. <em>When the night has come, and the land is dark&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8XL6C3vY0jM?rel=0\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: &#8220;Give Me One Reason,&#8221; by Tracy Chapman, with choreography by Chris Martin and Larkin Poynton. That&#8217;s Martin and Poynton dancing, too &#8212; and only Martin and Poynton. I&#8217;d already watched this a few times before that fact hit me, and then I had to watch it a few times more.] hen Tracy Chapman&#8217;s single [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"'Give Me One Reason,' 'Fast Car,' and 'Stand by Me' in a Midweek Music Break: Tracy Chapman","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2252,426,74,196],"tags":[834,4259,4260,4261,4262],"class_list":{"0":"post-17713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-midweek-music-break","7":"category-celebrities","8":"category-music","9":"category-television","10":"tag-stand-by-me","11":"tag-tracy-chapman","12":"tag-david-letterman","13":"tag-chris-martin-and-larkin-poynton","14":"tag-dancinf","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4BH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17713"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17722,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17713\/revisions\/17722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}