Sure, we still would have had the versions uploaded onto YouTube to listen to, but we would have never had the studio recording to jam out to. And more importantly, we would have never seen Combs share the stage with the song’s original artist – Tracy Chapman – at the Grammy Awards.
In the video, the conversation shifted to Combs’ love for music, and how the recent inclusion of “Fast Car” in his album Gettin’ Old surprised pretty much everyone. Garth opened up the discussion by saying:
“One of your biggest successes might not have come from country music, but Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car.’ It took off and it didn’t feel like it was planned. It felt like it caught everybody, including you and the record label, by surprise.”
Combs went on to tell the story of how the cover song came to be, and how his producer Jonathan Singleton almost talked the “Beautiful Crazy” singer out of recording the track:
“We get in and we finish early and Jonathan is like ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘What if we do a cover of Fast Car?’ I wanted to do it for me. I remember Jonathan trying to talk me out of it. He was like, ‘Dude, that song has been covered so many times. Nobody’s gonna care.’
I said, ‘I don’t care if anybody cares. I just want to have it.’ I had been covering it for years in college and it’s always been this really big part of my life. So we did it and it turned out really great. We put the record out and we didn’t promo it or anything and it just took off.”
Good thing Luke Combs stuck to his guns on that one.
And fun fact… Whiskey Riff posted a cover of Luke singing “Fast Car” back in 2018 and the reception from the fans was BONKERS. People were begging for him to take it to the studio for years following that first time he shared it. It might’ve been a shock to Singleton, but we could’ve told you it was gonna be a hit years ago.
Garth praised the decision to ultimately include the cover, and decided to quote another country music legend in order to compliment Combs’ performance of the Tracy Chapman classic:
“I know I instantly thought I loved this guy before, now I really love him. But also, in the words of George Strait, you sing the sh*t out of it too. You did that song justice.”
He sure did.
Combs went on to talk about how great it is that he can perform the cover during his concerts and no one gets upset that he’s playing a song that “isn’t his.” And Brooks piggy-backed on that point by saying that the new, younger generation thinks that’s “Fast Car
” is a Luke Combs song.
Garth might need to pump the brakes (car pun intended) on that one, but every other point he made was very much agreeable. You can hear more of the conversation between Combs and Brooks in the clip below:
Wait. Wait. Wait. Luke’s cover of Fast Car almost didn’t happen!?
Join @LukeCombs + @garthbrooks for more Artist-to-Artist conversations on The BIG 615 every day this week at 10a CThttps://t.co/QvCchEv3y2 pic.twitter.com/2O3QTxGtQY
— The BIG 615 (@big615radio) July 31, 2024
You cannot copy content of this page
