Tracy Chapman's Timeless Earworms 59:25

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On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's all easy.

Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher.

Today, I'm joined by three amazing journalists. Lydia Polgreen, New York Times opinion columnist and co-host of the New York Times Matter of Opinion podcast, which appears on Fridays. Boston music critic Maura K. Johnston and journalist Estelle Caswell, formerly of Vox's Earworm podcast, to talk about a record I've been listening to since 1988. Yes, people, I am that old, and I was pretty old when I started listening to it.

But many people may just be binging for the first time. Singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman's eponymous debut album. The album hit number one on the Apple charts this week, more than 35 years since its release, propelled in large part by Chapman's surprise fast car duet with country star Luke Combs at the Grammys. You got a fast car. It's fast enough so you can fly away. We gotta make a decision. Leave tonight or live and die this way.

It's interesting that Combs' country cover of "Fast Car" has fueled a renaissance of Chapman's music. The album is full of songs about striving for upward mobility, about social injustice and racial tensions, and it was written by a Black woman, a lesbian, at the tail end of the Reagan era.

On the other hand, maybe it's not so surprising at all given where we are as a country. So I want to talk to my guests about why we're not in such dissimilar times and why Tracy Chapman's album is a classic earworm of music, emotions, and politics.

I have a question this episode from someone who knows all about music, former Boston Globe music editor, Washington Post opinions editor, none other than my wife, Amanda Katz. In this case, I do know this album just a little better, but she knows a whole lot more about music. That's coming up after the break. ♪

Lydia, Mara, Estelle, thanks for being here. Of course. Great to be here, Carol. Thanks for having me. So I got this together at the last minute, and I truly appreciate it, not just because of the performance of Tracy Chapman, but for an ability to talk about something so actually joyous, which is nice in these difficult times. Amen. Amen.

I wanted to talk about, I don't know if I want to call it a comeback, but first I'd like for each of you to talk about your connection to this album and what does it bring up for you?

For me, I was in my 20s. It's possibly the most important album I listened to back then. And I listen to it all the time, actually. I haven't stopped listening to it. And it just reminds me of my 20s and what it was like to come out. The Reagan administration, which was very difficult for everybody, including gay people. The beginning of AIDS action and things like that.

Lydia, you go. Yeah. Gosh, I mean, this album was such a, like, it's like a potent totem for me. You know, in the late 80s, you know, my family was having really hard times. My dad was in grad school. We were so broke. You know, my parents were both working constantly. I was in middle school. And, you know, I was in middle school.

And it just, you know, the idea of like feeling trapped, of not knowing kind of how your life is, you know, how you're going to sort of get body and soul together, whether there's going to be enough money for like the next school year for you to have, you know, clothes to wear and things like that. It felt like it spoke to some of the like very deep material things that were happening in

my life. But it also spoke to, I think, to like a much broader thing, which was the sense of being closed in and that the opportunity or the sense that one could kind of move their life forward felt like it was shrinking. It just touched on so many social and racial and, I mean, everybody's focusing on Fast Car, and I know we'll talk about the whole album, but like when you listen to it, you know, from beginning to end, it really is an album that encapsulates the feeling of being alive at that time. Maura?

Yeah, I was also in middle school then. And I feel like for me, you know, something that was so stark about it was just how spare most of it sounded. And I felt like that was such a difference in presentation from the rest of the late 80s, which was a lot of, you know, Narada Michael Walden, heavy synths, lots of glitter, and also, you know, hard rock. And it was just so stark and it put the focus on the words, which I thought was really perfunctory.

profound. And over the years, you know, I've gone back to this record and just been kind of amazed by how eternal a lot of the themes are of struggle and wanting for a better world and talking about a revolution and, you know, hoping that that talking conjures something up. Estelle? Well, I hate to say this, but I was not born the year that it was released. Yeah.

This is what we call diversity. We've got to have diversity in these conversations. However, I will say that there are a handful of albums that were always in my parents' car. One was like Enya's first album. Oh, nice. Sail away, sail away. Tori Amos. And I only remember them by their album cover and Tracy Chapman. And I just remember like...

feeling like these albums were like little like peeks into the adult world. Um,

And I think for Tracy Chapman in particular, it was her voice that I just was so enamored by even, you know, at five years old, whenever we were driving to school. It was like otherworldly. It was kind of confusing as a kid. You're trying to place like, is this a man or is this a woman? Is this like, what is this person talking about? Obviously, Fast Car was...

Still on the radio, on alternative radio. But all of her songs kind of had that same quality to them. Very comforting, almost, and very warm. And I think as a kid, that's what resonated with me the most, is that I didn't understand what she was talking about.

but I could feel in the quality of her voice like this comforting feeling. And that's what always sticks with me. Yeah, it's interesting. My five-year-old was listening. I played the whole album yesterday at breakfast, and my five-year-old utterly sat up straight. It was really interesting to see and was really paying attention in a way. And thank God it wasn't Frozen or Moana, which is even worse. In any case...

The driving in your car listening to Parents Music was also the Luke Combs story, which I don't know if you know that, but that's how— Totally, yeah. That's how he came across it. It's funny. Candy and I were listening—Candy is my wife—and we were listening to it this morning. And she has—we joke that she has this very tragic and rare affliction that I call song blindness.

She can't remember the lyrics to any song, or if she does remember them, she remembers them wrong. So like, we were listening to Michael Jackson, she was like, "Tell him that it's me and you, Joe." And I was like, "No, it's tell him that it's human nature." Come on, like. And so this is like a constant running joke in our household. But when we were listening to this album,

I was amazed. Word for word, she knew all the words and knew them right. And she said that her mom, who was like working class Jewish boomer, loved this album, just loved it and wore the cassette out. And so it got kind of imprinted in her brain in this way. And-

But it's funny how that happens, right? That like certain songs just like almost fuse into your brain and you never forget them. Yeah, my daughter's like, how do you know all the words? I'm like, oh, honey, I can't even tell you. Anyway, there have been covers of Fast Car before. There's a dance version out there from 2016, if you can believe it. Country singer Luke Holmes' cover of Fast Car and their duet at the Grammys pushed the song to the top of the iTunes charts.

Lydia, you just wrote a column in the New York Times, and you weren't initially such a fan of the Combs rendition, but the Grammy performance changed your mind. Let's talk about that. Yeah, no, for sure.

I really love covers, right? Like, because I just think that the idea of finding something new and distinct in a song is just like such a, such an act of genius, you know? And, and I think it also is a real tribute to a song, right? To be able to find sort of amplitude that the person who initially wrote it didn't necessarily find or explore and then, and then sort of like blow that out, right? I mean, and, you know, there's some amazing examples. And I mean, one of the, one of the other highlights of the Grammys for me was Annie Lennox

singing Nothing Compares to You, which was a cover of a Prince song. But like, to even call it, you know, I mean, who owns that song? I mean, Sinead O'Connor owns that song. It was an incredible moment, right? So covers are very important to me. And when I heard the cover, I was like, oh, no, this is not a cover.

this is like a cover band. You know, this is someone doing just a kind of note for note, you know, trying to basically just kind of recreate a performance. And I was like, that to me is like, you know, a little bit of an insult to the artist and also an insult to the song, right? Because the song is so powerful that it can receive multiple interpretations and meanings. But then when I saw the performance, I realized like,

that there was actually, I think, a profound act of deference happening here. That he was basically saying, I can't improve upon this song. I just want more people to hear it as it was intended.

And, you know, from his kind of posture in the performance and from his, you know, just like clearly the way that he absolutely worshipped her, it was clear that like, oh, that's what this guy was up to. And I was like, I can get behind that. It's still not my favorite version of the song. So it was appreciation, not appropriation. I think it was appreciation and in some ways kind of tribute. And I think the other thing that is that like,

That does not prevent other artists from picking this song up and reinterpreting it in new ways, you know, in the future. I would love to see what, like, a hip-hop artist would do with it. Although, you know, she did have to sue Nicki Minaj. Tracy Chapman did at one point. I think she got, like, a $450,000 judgment. Yeah, she doesn't like people touching her songs at all. You can't license them. You gotta be careful.

Maura? Yeah, I was lukewarm on the cover. No pun intended, sorry. Because I feel like the production of it didn't help it. It had that kind of modern Nashville sterility to it. And then last summer, I saw Luke Combs live at Gillette Stadium, and that...

And the way he introduced the song was just so reverent too. And the performance live without the kind of compression in the studio really made the cover make sense to me. And the way the audience reacted too was just so heartening. You know, it was all of this just like appreciation radiating out from what...

tens of thousands of people. And I felt that too when he performed on Sunday with the sort of reverence that he looked at Tracy Chapman with and the deference too that he gave to her. He really just loves this song. And I feel like, you know, even though it might not be artistically that profound, I feel like in this age of

attention span being so short, giving that shine to something that was so important to him and bringing her accolades. She was the first Black woman to win the Country Songwriter of the Year, and that I think is really special. Yeah. So Combs' cover won the Single of the Year as you're referencing the 2023 Country Music Awards, and as a result, Chapman became the first Black

Songwriter to win CMA Song of the Year. It's surprising and it's not, I guess. Estelle, you've done some reporting on Black American folk music and intentional separation from country music. Can you talk just briefly about this?

Yeah, I mean, there's like a very, very long tradition of Black artists having a tremendous amount of influence on country music, but not necessarily being seen as country artists. And that goes back to like the turn of the century. So this is not an unusual—it's a sad but not unusual stat—

I will say that over the last decade or so, maybe a little bit less, I've seen a lot more Black artists that have been sort of re-brought into the mainstream, whether that's Sister Rosetta Tharpe or... Big Mama Thornton. Yeah, Big Mama Thornton. Like all these artists from the sort of early blues that have really been seen today more as like

of country music. So I'm not surprised, but I'm also, like, glad a lot more artists in this generation are starting to look back in history and see things from a less rose-colored-glasses lens. Sure. Just so you're... It was the turn of the last, last century. Yes, the last, last century. The 1900s. Yeah. I mean, this is the story of American music, right, is taking the very, very real artistic...

product of Black American artistry, of their pain and experience, and sort of transmuting it through white experience, right? I mean, this is the history of country music. This is the history of rock and roll. This is the history of the blues.

And I think that what's so profound about Tracy Chapman is that she's sort of getting her flowers at this moment where it's not just the sort of the racial part of this, right, where the sort of the Black root of American music has been erased for so long. She also was appearing as...

at a Grammys show where, you know, it was just wall-to-wall, like, grown-ass women of a series of just, like, banging performances by grown-up women who are in, you know, at the height of their, you know, kind of mastery of their fame or, you know, they're taking a victory lap like Joni Mitchell and,

So I don't know, the combination of those two things to me felt just really, really satisfying. And I don't want to oversell it. There's still a lot of work to do. Absolutely. We're going to talk about women in a minute. But I want to talk about the rest of the debut album because Fast Car obviously is an earworm. But I'm talking about Our Illusion was the one I remember from it. But

It's really extraordinary. A lot of young people are hearing it now for the first time. One of my older sons was like, "Did you know about this, mom?" And I was like, "Yes, yes, son, I did." But more, I love your take. It's not just "Fast Car." The whole album is incredibly political. "Fast Car" is actually more personal in a lot of ways. Talking about our revolution is a protest anthem. "Across the Lines" is about race relations. "Behind the Wall," it's acapella talking about domestic violence.

For my lover, two weeks in a Virginia jail, some say this is about a crime, but let's just say the sodomy laws were still on the books in Virginia and almost half the U.S. states at the time and stayed there until the early 2000s. Mark, can you sort of talk about this idea?

Yeah, well, I think she was also very explicit about the old idea that the personal is political. Like, I was reading some old interviews with her, you know, and in Rolling Stone in 88, she said, she asked if she was a folk singer. She kind of hesitated, and she was like, I guess the answer is yes and no. What comes to people's minds in the Anglo-American tradition of the folk singer, they don't think about the Black roots.

So in that sense, no. But my influences and my background are different, which is a combination of the black and white folk traditions. In 2015, she talked about how sometimes I'm called a political songwriter, and I don't really have a problem with it, but it's not how I see myself. I write about what I'm thinking about. I write about the things I'm curious about. So that means I write love songs, but I also write songs about social issues and about what it means to live. And I think that the album is kind of a holistic...

you know, depiction of just her thoughts and feelings over the course of many years. She wrote talking about her evolution when she was still a student at Tufts, I believe. And so, um,

you know, this idea that just her observations, because of where they're coming from, are inherently political, is, I think, something that you can unpack really well. She wasn't really resisting that. I actually interviewed her at a festival called Sister Fire. I can't believe I'm saying that. It was in Washington, D.C., and it was just what you imagined it. And

She was so terse and so resistant to talking about. She's like, it is what it is. And she was playing Frisbee the whole time. And she wasn't rude. She's very, she's, I wouldn't say even shy. She just is not interested in explaining herself. And so it was very difficult to craft something because this album hit me. This was before it really hit big with the Wembley Stadium thing. So, uh,

Let me ask about that. It's not that there wasn't social justice stuff at the time. NWA came out with Fuck the Police the same year. Public Enemy had Fight the Power in 1999. But this was a different vibe than Tracy Chapman sort of standing alone on stage with an acoustic guitar. It was the second Reagan administration where things just started to really feel terrifying, I would say, especially for a gay person, for a woman, for everybody. But

Reagan. Getting back to N.W.N., Public Enemy, is there overlap or can you try to give an idea for people of this world then? Yeah, I mean, look, this was coming out in the context of just a kind of unraveling, right? I mean, if you look at the large arc of American history, you know, the post-war period was one of big economic boom, but it was also one of big social programs to help people. That was the period that, like, built the American middle class.

And the 80s is when it all kind of unraveled.

unravels, right? I mean, the Reagan revolution was, you know, the scariest words that you could hear, I'm, you know, I'm from the government and I'm here to help, right? And the huge dismantling of all kinds of social programs and things to help people. You know, Fast Car is a song about social mobility, being able to go from one place to another and not being trapped. So I think that that music spoke to something that, you know, people were really, really, really viscerally experiencing. And I think it's

actually very meaningful that she was sort of discovered through live performance, and then that her album ended up, you know, sort of like just going wild in that performance that you just mentioned, Cara, right? The Wembley Stadium. Right.

Across the border and into the city You and I can both get jobs And finally see what it means to be living

You know, if there are people listening who have not seen this clip and it's been sort of going viral again, you know, 24-year-old Tracy Chapman, all she had was her guitar. She was basically, she'd already performed. She was filling time, you know, in order to hold the stage for, I think it was Stevie Wonder. It was Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday. Exactly. Yeah, it was Nelson Mandela's birthday.

And here is this 24-year-old woman armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar. It wasn't even like Fast Car was her big hit. The crowd is jeering and they're, you know, everybody's kind of grumpy. And by the end of it, you know, this is someone who played coffee houses, you know, by the end of it, she's got the whole crowd just absolutely silent and wrapped by this song. And I think like that performance just really tells you something about the readiness of

of people who had no context, who had no information about who this person was, to hear those words and to experience that kind of performance. Yeah, silence, a huge crowd. You only get that kind of response if you really feel it. And that's Thatcher's England, which was also. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Right. We'll be back in a minute.

Let's talk about the politics of the whole album, because it connects the politics of today. And I think that's another reason it's resonating. The album came out in 1988 at the end of the Reagan era, as I said, and in England, the Thatcher era. And these were the issues of the time. Estelle, are these issues resonating with younger audiences now in this song? Do you think that? I think so. I mean...

I would say that like a huge theme in the album is like fight or flight, basically. Whether you're willing to fight and talk about things that are really scary or just try to protect yourself and the people that you love.

And I think that's a feeling that a lot of people have now. It's less, I would say, flight in a cowardly way than in a flight of self-preservation type of way. And I think that, to me, really resonates. Because you don't, it feels like a lot of people today don't have control over what's going on. And so fighting doesn't result in that much anymore, it feels like.

And so I think that theme in the album, across all of the songs, like For My Lover, they feel like very political in a different way. Laura, talk about that. One of Tracy Chapman's last live performances in the U.S. before the Grammys was 2020, actually. She doesn't perform very much. She performed Talking About a Revolution on Late Night with Seth Meyers the night before the elections, NPR called NPR.

2020 the year of protest music, but it was Chapman they called. Why do you think, it might be Seth Meyers was a fan or whatever, but talk a little bit about this moment and also are we seeing more musicians take on social issues again? I mean, it's sort of light like in the way Taylor Swift does, which she sort of does, but also is dancing a lot.

I think that we are. I mean, you know, Universal Music Group started a task force to work on social issues, particularly pertaining to racial justice in the wake of the 2020 protests. One thing about talking about a revolution is that when I first heard it, and again, I was, you know, young, I thought it was a cover of an old song. Don't you know that talking about a revolution sounds...

I thought it was something that, you know, had been around for a while because it had such a timeless quality to it. And it was so simply spoken and, you know, the melody was so just like resonant. And so I think that that aspect of the song... Meaning it sounded like an old folk song, right? Yeah. Or even something that like Bob Dylan, you know... Woody Guthrie. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that, you know,

It was chosen. I mean, Seth is around my age too. And so probably it was very similar where he was like, this is what I remember as like my first protest song, right? Because it was something that was on the radio back in the day, but it was also giving that message of we need change. We need change now. And that message on its own can be really powerful to just

shift people's thinking. So income and wealth inequality didn't start in the 1980s, it's grown exponentially. Mountain of Things talks about this. Life I've always wanted, I guess I'll never have. I'll be working for somebody else.

The line is, life I've always wanted, I guess I'll never have. That's the American dream, Lydia. That house in the suburbs has become more elusive. Obviously, housing prices are high. Medium home prices have gone up one third in the past five years. Rent is also becoming unaffordable. Half the renters, most of which are young people,

So talk a little bit about this, because again, resonates a mountain of things. When I heard it, I was like, oh, wow, that hasn't been solved. Yeah, no, totally. So, I mean, I think that the sort of experiences that she describes resonate in a lot of ways, right? But I also thought like, wow, you know, I can't imagine that someone on the salary of a checkout girl and whatever the job that this partner was going to get that would

you know, buy them a house in the suburbs. I just thought like, well, that's just not going to happen. I mean, which is a real change because I think in the 80s, like it was conceivable that, you know, two people without a college education who had, you know, hourly wage jobs could conceivably, you know, buy a home. So I think that these problems have just grown tremendously worse. Um,

Now, the other song that, like, sort of broke really big last year, and I wrote about this one, too, was Closer to Fine from the Indigo Girls. And Kara's laughing because she knows this is an obsession of mine. Like, I really love the Indigos. I'm not a big fan, but I get it. Yeah. You know, it was on the Barbie soundtrack, right? And, or, well, there was a cover on the Barbie soundtrack, but the song played a pivotal role in the movie. And I remember

thinking to myself, like, oh, man, like, why are people listening to the Indigo Girls? They're so cringe. And there's something sort of, like, cringe about Tracy Chapman, too, this, like, sort of real sincerity, like, you know, non-ironic, you know, like, I'm going to actually, like, authentically and seriously talk about the problems of our world. I feel like so much of songwriting and popular music now is enveloped in sort of, you know, layer after layer of, like, ironizing and

And there's something about the directness of this music, right? And that it's just saying what it means. And it's beautiful writing. Don't get me wrong. I'm not like this is, you know, sort of, you know, paint by numbers. It's not Easter egging. No, you're not Easter egging. You're not. You're just sort of saying what you mean in a sort of very plain and authentic way. And to me, that speaks to a hunger for sincerity, you know, for authenticity, for a sense of connection that doesn't require words.

you know, understanding some, you know, Talmudic code of like Taylor references. Yeah, so Maura and Estelle, talk about this. One thing I kept thinking of while I was listening to these lyrics was just, and this is, I know this is a very crude analogy, but I kept thinking of a lot of my TikTok feed and

And just how, you know, there are people just talking about how they're having problems. The woman who's just like, I just want to rot in bed forever, you know, or the people who are talking very honestly about how can anybody afford these prices for groceries? And that...

That struck a chord with me because I do feel like people want that sincerity, even though there is so much, like you said, irony and Easter egging and, you know, put the pieces together to make up the blind item in certain song lyrics. And I do think that people crave that directness in a time when... That's an interesting link. Yeah, you're right. They are. Yeah. Yeah.

TikTok is the coffeehouse of 2020 and 2020s. It's the open mic. It's the ability to just like speak directly to the public and not have a massive filter of a record label in front of you yet. Obviously, that's also the place where scouting happens and things like that. But

Yeah, just like Mara said, it's the place where people are direct. And I think in Tracy Chapman's time, it was college campuses, a lot more in the sort of communities around that. So yeah, I can see the parallel so, so closely. And especially in a lot of the more independent, self-released artists, as opposed to the ones that are getting picked up by record labels after one cover. It's the artists that are...

deciding to stay independent, that are deciding to self-release on their own, that have a little bit more, um, ability to say these things without the massive production behind them or the need to fund a tour, all of those things. Um, so I, I hope that continues, but, uh,

You never know. Universal Music Group just took all of their artists off, so now maybe that'll give some more space for the indie artists to thrive. Explain that for people who don't know. Yes. I mean, this has been a long time coming. It's like...

classic situation where a big corporate conglomerate has their entire library on a social media platform and is, you know, using that leverage against the social media platform to attempt to make more money, not obviously for their artists so much as for themselves. And, yeah,

In this case, they weren't bluffing. I think a lot of people maybe thought that they were. But yeah, as of right now, there are no Universal Music Group artists, especially, you know, the big ones on TikTok, which is the biggest music platform in the world. What is your favorite song on this album, this first album of Tracy Chapman's? And I will go first. It isn't Fast Car, although I do love Fast Car, but it's If Not Now.

I just love that song. I just thought it was just beautifully written. And it may have been my, I don't know, it was probably the most romantic song on the thing. And it probably reflected being a closeted gay person. And so that was mine. And it was also feeling the pressure of what was happening around AIDS and the increasing activism on behalf of gay people around that issue. ♪

And it reminds me of the quilts on the mall and things like that. Maura, what about you? Yeah, I love If Not Now. I think it has such a beautiful melody. And also the line that really resonated with me was just, love's the only thing that's free. We must take it where it's found. Pretty soon it may be costly because if not now, then when? ♪

You know, I thought that that is just such a depiction of like how life in capitalism can be terrifying and that everything that you love can be stripped away or monetized in some fashion. Yeah, I probably just broke up with some other lesbian. Oh, yeah. Estelle, what was yours?

I would say For My Lover and not for the lyrical content as much as the instrumentation. This is like the first song on the album where I listened through and I was like, this is exactly how she should be accompanied. I miss my life so I could have you, you, you, you, you.

It's a little bit more twangy. It's a little bit more raw. There's less reverb and kind of, you know, like studio production that you can hear. It just feels a little bit more visceral and clear and...

I think the lack of reverb on this, even though there is probably a ton, is just so much nicer with her style of music. And I think it just comes across. It's gritty. And I like the grit in it. Lydia? It's sort of hard to choose because, you know, I love this album so much. But I think I'll choose the first song, which is Talking About a Revolution, because to me, like,

It was a time in my life when this album came out where, like, I needed something to help me think about what a future might be. And even though it's talking about social justice and talking about, you know, I think at this time in my life, and it was, you know, sort of adolescence when you're thinking, like, nothing's ever going to get better in my life. The idea that, like...

this person who, you know, kind of looked a little bit like me, dressed like kind of the way that I would want to dress, was talking about a future that was going to be different than things were right now, I think was like just the song that I needed to hear, you know? So every time I hear that song, I'm sort of transported back to that feeling of,

of, of, of recognition, right? Of seeing like someone who's been able to do, you know, to sort of be the person that they want to be out in the, in the world and also to like make change happen, you know? And, and, and,

I don't know. There's something about the hopefulness of that song and it's like galvanizing force that just stays with me and always has. I will say something very interesting is that there's an entirely acapella song on the album. I can't remember the name of it. Behind the Wall, yeah. That just seems in such a risk in a age in 1988 when that was absolutely not going to happen.

Last night I heard the screaming, loud voices behind the wall. Another sleepless night for me, it won't do no good to call the police.

And it's incredible. And I think it kind of goes back to that idea that today there's a lot more acapella singing on TikTok, things like that, where people are a lot more direct and real. And the fact that this happened on this record that sold across the world millions of copies, that people were able to just hear that acapella track and listen to it, it's

amongst all the songs that were playing on the radio at the time. It's just really, really cool. It's funny because a lot of people are like talking about

Tracy Chapman as if she was like a one-hit wonderer or, you know, I mean, like this album was huge, right? Like it was huge. She was a huge star. She was on the cover of Rolling Stone. And then she had like, you know, a bunch of other really successful albums. You know, she played again on the Grammys. Crossroads. Yeah, Crossroads. And, you know, Give Me One Reason, like what an incredible song. Like Sheryl Crow, Eat Your Heart Out. Like that's, you know, what a great kiss-off song. But anyway, so it's like she actually like

She's like a grown woman who's had like a real career, you know? And so it's not as if she's like been off moldering somewhere like unknown. Like she, she did, she did the thing, you know, she was a real star. So I'm going to switch to the Grammys themselves and the other things. Um, uh,

And talk about the women that really did sweep the stage. And a lot, as you mentioned, Lydia, are career musicians. Now we can talk about Joni Mitchell. She got a standing ovation for Both Sides Now, one of the most perfect songs, I think. Her first Grammy performance ever. Brandi Carlile has been bringing her on stage, and she's performing at the Hollywood Bowl. She's 80. I don't know if that matters at all. But first, you, Estelle, how did you look at this revival as a...

you know, I remember when it came out. So, yeah. Nice take. I love this song. I think it's like Lydia was talking about when she was talking about covers. It's like this song became famous with Judy Collins and then Joni Mitchell sort of has revitalized it on her own terms over the years. Yeah.

This is an... It's incredible songwriting, but I think it also... Her performance at Newport Festival also shows how much work Brandi Carlile puts in in revitalizing older artists, like Tanya Tucker, for instance. I...

I just want to know who is she going to tap next? Because I think the work that she puts in and really not making comebacks for artists feel inauthentic is really, really cool. And the fact that

She's been able to sort of bring all of these collaborators on to lift up such an iconic artist like Joni Mitchell and have this moment at the Grammys is pretty remarkable. And I think that just goes to show the work she's put in over the years in making that happen. Because it's a long game. That is not something you can do overnight. But I remember watching this for the first time and being like,

Wait, she did what? How did this happen? Like, how did she pull this off? And, like, obviously props to Joni Mitchell for getting on stage, but also props to Grandi Carlile and her team for, like, just...

making this such a remarkable moment and such a special moment. Lydia? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Estelle was talking about covers and like, a wonderful thing is as an artist ages and they play the same songs, they almost become like covers, right? Like in the sense that they're being reinterpreted in ways that find like new meaning, you know? And I just thought that Joni Mitchell's performance was just like truly one for the ages because

But, you know, her voice has changed. It's still beautiful, but it just has a completely different texture to it now. You know, the difference between a woman in her 20s saying, I really don't know life at all. And an 80-year-old woman saying, I really don't know life. That's the last line of the song. I really don't know life.

I really don't know life at all. I mean, like, that is, I mean, that's what great art is, right? It's like that those words can have such profound and also such profoundly different meaning when sung by the same person, like, decades apart, you know? I mean, that is just extraordinary. I feel like she does know life.

You match at the end. She goes, you know, I really do know life at all. Maura, so many female artists won this year. Miley Cyrus got her first Grammy, and by the way, epic hair. She was doing Jane Fonda, apparently. It was like Jane Fonda meets Disney.

Tina Turner, right? Like, with the Bob Mackie dress. I mean, it was unbelievable. It was epic. There were some gay men involved in putting that whole look together. That was correct. But let me move along, because we're such dressers, you know. Miley Cyrus got first Grammy. Billie Eilish, SZA, Lainey Wilson, Boy Genius. Olivia Rodrigo did not win, but she was nominated. More as a shift from a few years ago? Yeah, I would say it is. I mean, I think that

Certainly, pop has been dominated by young women for a while. It's funny, I listen to the Classic American Top 40 station a lot, which is available on the iHeart app. And they're always talking about how these are milestones for women. And it's so amazing that so many women are in the chart. And, oh, the Go-Go's, you know, they're the first band of women to ever make the

this chart achievement. And it really is striking to see how far things have come since then, especially in country where

Bro country was the dominant force for such a long time for Laney Wilson to win her category is really impressive Miley I mean flowers is just such a great song too And and I thought I was surprised that it won the award that it did but it was also deserving but I do think that there is a shift I think that you know young women are

saying profound things that resonate with a lot of people. One thing is that stadium tours are still really male, and I'd like that to change. Like Fenway Park here in Boston just had its first female headliner, I think like six years ago with Lady Gaga. And they haven't been putting on shows for very long, but still. I saw Pink there last summer, and she...

Flew around Fenway Park. It was great. And of course, there's Taylor Swift. She's arguably the singer-songwriter of the generation right now, at least. And even though she's not political in the same way, Tracy Chapman, she's now being targeted by the right, especially online, with essentially fake revenge porn, conspiracy theories, so much so with the revenge porn, the fake revenge porn that X had to suspend searches for because they have no technical capabilities to do anything else now at this moment.

Lydia, talk about this because she is political, but she's not political, but she's certainly become a political creature for the right. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, a couple of my colleagues at The Times have written about this. My conservative colleagues at The Times have written about this, and I think that their take is basically correct, which is like,

You know, Taylor has become this kind of Rorschach test for the weirdness, like just the absolute kooky batshit craziness of the right. You know, like here you have this incredibly talented, conventionally beautiful blonde, you know, woman.

who does the most normal thing that you can imagine, which is fall in love with the hot, hunky football player and, you know, maybe live happily ever after, but that wouldn't be great for Taylor's music. She requires regular doses of heartbreak to, you know, keep her creative juices flowing. But, like...

And the right has just gone absolutely apeshit. I just think that, like, it's this moment where it's like, "Guys, like, you know, the hottest girl in school, like, dating the captain of the football team is, like, literally Americana." That should be the conservative op, right? Is that, like, they managed to make this sort of very conventional heterosexual relationship in a time of, like, overwhelming queerness and polyamory and all this other stuff that freaks the right out.

So I think it's fascinating that, you know, that there's been such a freakout about Taylor and sort of what she's up to. But I also think, like, I don't know, like, there's nothing more intimidating than a powerful woman who's, like, sort of taking on the world in her own terms, is doing what she wants, is, like, making art based on it, and is, like, talking about, like,

like female shit that like, you know, and doesn't really care what men think and doesn't really care what like men want. It's like, go girl. Like, that's awesome. Good for you. I mean, I'm a, I'm a part-time, I'm not like a full-throated Swifty, but like, I'm glad she exists in the world. You're sounding like one. Yeah. You're sounding like one. Estelle, how do you look at that? I mean, I think that in the early days of the Travis and Taylor courtship, there was this sort of trend on TikTok that, you know,

girlfriends were talking to their boyfriends who love football and saying, have you ever heard of Travis Kelsey? And I think that that is where it stems from is that

Taylor has entered a relationship with one of the most famous football players in the NFL and is like 500,000 times more important than him to most of the world. Comparatively, there is a tiny small fraction of football fans who love Travis Kelsey. And so in this relationship, he's like a niche celebrity, whereas Taylor is not. And I think that is like

that is the power right there. That's like what really is just grating at the right is that

the hunky football player is actually like... He's the side piece and he likes it. He's the side piece. And he is way less powerful. Yeah, no, he's totally fine with it. He looks fantastic. So, Maura, Taylor did make history by winning Album of the Year a fourth time, the only artist to have done that. One interesting moment at the Grammys was when Jay-Z called out the Grammys for not having given an award to Beyonce. She's been nominated four times the most decorated artist in Grammy history. Any thoughts on this?

I think the Recording Academy is really trying to change this with encouraging more people to come into the voting fold from different backgrounds and different areas of music. I think that it's unfortunate that Beyonce didn't release an album within this year's eligibility period because I think Renaissance is just, I mean, her albums are all just so great. I think change is slow.

And I hope that it quickens up because I do feel like there are a lot of Black women. I actually, you know, I wanted SZA to win Album of the Year this year because SOS, I thought as an album, was such a galvanizing force.

and it was it's so great it's so diverse in sonics and again really unapologetically from a point of view and I felt like it was a missed call there because I felt like that record was the album that really kind of even though Taylor Swift obviously sold out stadiums and you know changed the economies of cities but as a

as a collection of songs that had an effect, I felt like SOS was really important.

and also great to listen to. Like, Kill Bill is an awesome song. Lydia? I mean, I think SZA was robbed, and it's, you know, it's tragic, and, you know, I'm not going to, you know, do the Kanye thing, and look how that worked out in terms of where Kanye is now. But, you know, the SZA album, I totally agree. So modern, you know? Like, just something so modern and now. And I'm sorry, but Kill Bill is, like, one of the most unhinged, extraordinary, like,

I'm going to do a song about murdering my ex and his girlfriend, and you're going to like it. That was my favorite song of the year. Like, just hands down, it was my favorite song of the year. And it just, I don't know, there was something about that album and that song that just, like, I mean, if you really, talking about a revolution, like, making that, giving that the big award, I think would have been an extraordinary statement. Estelle?

I mean, I guess my question is, like, is our award shows only going to be less and less reflective of people's actual opinions on music? Because I feel like I'm...

any time an award show season comes around, I just immediately feel incredibly jaded. Obviously, these people are going to win and these people are going to lose and this person's going to win for this reason and, you know, this person's going to win for this reason. I'd never once thought, you know, SZA would win just because of the actual show itself. And I'm curious if, like,

That, if you feel like that's ever going to change, is it actually going in the right direction? Because I really don't think it is. Finding new artists. Well, yeah. In that, that's it. Like, we need a new award show to actually, like. Although this one was surprisingly entertaining and actually wonderful in a lot of ways. It was sort of delivered on the award show promise, which is very low bar. But every week we get a question from an outside expert. This week, she's actually in-house. Have a listen.

Hi, this is Amanda Katz. I'm an opinions editor at the Washington Post, as well as a former music editor of the Boston Globe and also the wife of Kara Swisher. It has been so fun as a member of Gen X to see some of these acts recently be rediscovered by a new generation. I'm thinking not only of Tracy Chapman and her whole amazing first album, which was such an important album to me in my youth.

but also Kate Bush with Running Up That Hill, which got rediscovered when it was on the soundtrack to Stranger Things, and Nirvana, which has had a huge resurgence to the point that my two-year-old even has a t-shirt of that band. What do you think is the next big Gen X musical act that deserves to be rediscovered, and why?

Showing off her music cred there. Estelle, why don't you start? Enya. Enya. Obviously. I mean, I'm an Enya publicist, so, you know, just have to go for it. Why? You have to answer why, because we only have one more question. Why? I mean, personally, I think that music, her music is so...

Great for now. Sonically, I think it matches a lot of what sort of the shoegazy vibe of music is going towards, but I like the fact that it's not shoegazy. It's actually just very...

calming and nice and has rhythm and her voice is incredible and she's also a recluse like other artists on this list so yeah I don't think that would ever get her out of a hole but I'm an unabashedly I get pulverized for this but I love it that's fine Orinoco flow I can I'll take that I can take that again Maura

I'm going to say The Breeders. And I think a lot of it is Olivia Rodrigo being the sort of Brandi Carlile figure for alt-rock acts. She kind of primed the pump with her song Bad Idea, right? Which was my favorite single of last year. And she's bringing them on. She's having them open for her on her big tour, which I think is great. Because I think that they're a band that their approach to pop music is so...

sideways and fun and giddy that I think it's one of those things that you'll have the two-year-olds, the six-year-olds, you know, jumping along to Cannonball because it is like just a really fun track. Yeah. Lydia? Actually, Cannonball was recently added to me and my wife's like kind of like liked songs on Spotify and has been on repeat. So I think you're onto something there. Yeah.

So I'm going to cheat and say two people. One is, she never really went away, but I feel like Tori Amos is about to have just a massive moment. I saw her perform at the King's Theater, not last year, but the year before. And she's just the most extraordinary performer. And I was like, oh, where has she been silent all these years? No, she hasn't been silent all these years. She's been making music, she's been doing her thing. But I think that she could have a big breakout. She did a cover of...

of the Soul to Soul song, Back to Life. And she was like, I've never done this before, but I'm just going to do it right now, like at the piano. And it just brought down the house. So that was an incredible, incredible show. So I just think that there's like some Tori Amos song and not the one that you expect that's going to like break out and, you know, yeah, it's going to go crazy. The other one, the other one is Natalie Merchant, because I think

like Tracy Chapman, she's just sort of disappeared. But she's always been there for me, both in 10,000 Maniacs. But I sort of feel like she has that similar quality of this sort of quiet voice that has kind of always been there, but is just really primed to come back. All right, last question. Tracy Chapman lives a quiet life in San Francisco. I see her in San Francisco. I've seen her a number of times. Some people say she's a hermit. She's not. She's out. I've seen her out.

all the time. She's been now nominated for the Songwriters Hall of Fame. I do want to end on her. Do we think she should come out of retirement and go on tour and pull in big audiences again? Is this going to be a real comeback or a nice nest egg for her? Estelle, you first, then Maura, then Lydia.

I mean, that would be great. I don't know what I got from the performance in the Grammys that she wasn't any further down the road in terms of her almost kind of reluctance and not reluctance, but just...

Like, she could do without going on tour, basically. She's fine with herself. Diffident is the word that I thought. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, yep, I'm here. I can do this thing. Okay, bye. This didn't blow up my ego at all. It's totally fine. She seemed to enjoy it, but I don't think she needs it for herself. At least that was my interpretation. And I think that's really the biggest question is, like, does she want that or not? Or have something to say about, say, Trump or anything else. Maura?

Yeah, I agree with Estelle. I think that if she wants to, yes, absolutely. But don't force it because, again, so much of the appeal of her music is...

the realness and the from the heartness and the, you know, just plain spoken honesty. And for her to do like a kind of nostalgic cash grab would be really antithetical to what makes her so special. Yeah. And it certainly won't become a car commercial because she refuses to commercialize. Just for people to know, she doesn't, she could probably make a fortune with that. So yeah, it has not, has not allowed any commercialization of her music.

Lydia? What I would love, if she wanted to do this, and this was interesting to her, I'd be really interested in her having a residency, right? Sort of like what Springsteen did on Broadway, right? Or Celine Dion, and we didn't even talk about how amazing it was to see her. Is there a venue that she really loves in San Francisco where she would do, you know, a series of shows that, I mean, you know, like a huge Gen X audience would like literally fly to her to sort of

you know, if there was a run of, you know, two weeks of shows, like, it would be a big event, you know, and you wouldn't have to go on tour. It wouldn't be, like, I would love for something like that and then to have a live album come out of it. Like, if I were her manager, I'd be like, let's do this. Like, wouldn't that be cool? And, like, the people who really, really love you are the ones who are going to make the effort to come and show up to see you. Other than that, I hope that she remains, like, extremely unbothered. Like...

You know, she has a piece to her that's just, and that's skin. I mean, I just, you know, fantastic. Perfect. All right, you guys, thank you so much. And everybody, please, thanks to you all. And please listen to the whole Tracy Chapman album. It's well worth it.

your short amount of time actually all that you've got is your soul and on that thank you guys so much for doing this and at the last minute too and i really appreciate it such a pleasure such a pleasure so much fun thank you thanks

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Naeem Araza, Christian Castro Rossell, Kateri Yochum, Megan Cunane, Megan Burney, and Michael McDowell. Special thanks to Mary Mathis, Kate Gallagher, and Andrea Lopez Cruzado. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a house in the suburbs. If not, take your fast car and keep on driving.

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