And it was lost on no one that this charge was led by a sexually ambiguous woman of color in a time when a doddering, reactionary white man defined America’s image.ģ0 years after Chapman first made her mark, the U.S. But when that first Tracy Chapman album burst into being, it felt like something unprecedented was happening, or at least something the likes of which the nation hadn’t seen since the days of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs more than two decades earlier. Sure, an eyeblink later we had The Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, et al. “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution,” which proudly proclaimed, “finally the tables are starting to turn”).
In the year of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” here came a forthright troubadour with a force-of-nature voice delivering songs about domestic abuse (the chilling, a cappella “Behind the Wall”), the harsh realities of American poverty (“Fast Car”), the madness of materialism (“Mountains O’ Things”), worldwide injustice (“Why?”), and of course, the long-overdue arrival of a political sea change (the rabble-rousing
But the force of her songs, sound, and persona made it impossible to imagine any other scenario. Though nobody had heard of Chapman before April of ’88, by September she was co-headlining Amnesty International’s Human Rights Now! tour, alongside socio-politically savvy rock titans like Springsteen, Sting, and Peter Gabriel. 1 record all over the globe, an armful of Grammys, a Top 10 hit with “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” and saturation of just about every arm of the media, from magazine covers to radio playlists. Nobody was expecting an androgynous young African-American balladeer with an acoustic guitar to bring back America’s social conscience and rise almost overnight from obscurity to iconic status.īut when Tracy Chapman’s self-titled debut album arrived, packed with undeniably urgent tunes that could only be classified as protest songs, it was as if the world suddenly realized it had been nursing a Chapman-sized void for years, which was finally being filled. The album charts, airwaves, and MTV rotation were overloaded with bigger-is-better hair metal and synth-swathed, hi-tech dance pop. It felt like the entire country had taken a worrying swing to the right. Conspicuous consumerism had become a virtue, if not a requirement.
#First dance tracy chapman the promise full#
The “greed is good” era was in full swing. had been through two terms of Ronald Reagan, and the sense of American entitlement (or at least white American entitlement) had reached toxic levels. Before Tracy Chapman came along, 1988 sure didn’t seem like it was waiting for her.
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