Country star Luke Combs has one of the biggest songs in America right now: On the new Billboard July 8’s Hot 100, his cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” sits at No. 2. Additionally, it also topped the Country Airplay chart this week, which helped Chapman make history in the country music.
Before the last graph, rolling stone reported that if “Fast Car” made it to No. 1 (which it has now), it would make Chapman the first black woman to have sole writing credit on a No. 1 country song.
Only a handful of black women have written on a #1 country song, including Tayla Parx on Dan + Shay’s “Glad You Exist.” She said of Chapman’s song, “Any song that sounds good on guitar can most likely be a country song. With a good song, you can take it and make it sound like seven different genres, which says a lot about the “Fast Car” type of song: it can be a pop song, a country song, it can be anything. what, because it’s just a great song.
Combs previously told the song’s publication, “The guitar part in this song is super iconic, and everyone knows the song as soon as you start playing it. They know it, and they sing. It’s like “Free Bird” or “Jolene”.