https://www.nytimes.com/2024/
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Her triumphant performance at the Grammy Awards left fans wondering what she has been doing since she left the music world, and whether she might return.
By Ben Sisario and Heather Knight
Tracy Chapman’s rare public appearance at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night — where she practically stole the show performing her 1988 song “Fast Car” with the country singer Luke Combs — left many fans wondering why she had largely stepped away from music for more than a decade.
Despite some scattered performances on television and at awards shows, Chapman, 59, has remained almost entirely absent from the music world in recent years, having released her last studio album in 2008 and done her last tour in 2009. Since she first emerged in the late 1980s, she has always been known as a reclusive and private figure.
“Being in the public eye and under the glare of the spotlight was, and it still is, to some extent, uncomfortable for me,” she told The Irish Times in 2015. “There are some ways by which everything that has happened in my life has prepared me for this career. But I am bit shy.”
The acclaim for her Grammys performance — Taylor Swift could be seen singing along in the crowd — was a sign of how beloved Chapman remains. Combs’s note-for-note cover of “Fast Car” went to No. 2 on Billboard’s pop singles chart last year, and after the Grammys, Chapman’s original began shooting up iTunes’s download chart.
After her debut LP, “Tracy Chapman,” was released in 1988 — and went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart — she released seven more studio albums. Her last, “Our Bright Future,” came out in 2008. Jon Pareles of The New York Times described it as a collection of “morose love songs” as well as “her latest utopian vision of a world without war or greed.”
Chapman performed at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2012. Credit...Kevin Wolf/Associated PressWhat has she been up to?
Since then her appearances have been few and far between. She performed at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2012, playing for the blues guitarist Buddy Guy, who was one of the honorees that year. She turned up at David Letterman’s final shows in 2015, doing “Stand by Me.” And on the eve of the presidential election in 2020, she appeared on “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” performing “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” from her debut album; after the last notes, she moved aside to reveal a sign behind her saying “vote.”
Last year, as Combs’s version of “Fast Car” became a surprise hit, the tune won song of the year at the Country Music Association Awards, making Chapman the first Black songwriter to win that prize. (She did not appear to accept it.)
A quiet life in San Francisco
Chapman is so private that many San Franciscans were surprised to learn after the Grammys that she lives in their city. She’s not part of the socialite scene or involved in politics, and she seems to mostly avoid major events.
But she can still be seen around town. The owner of a bookstore where she sometimes shops posted on X after her Grammys performance that she was “so down to earth in real life” when spotted buying food for her dog at a local pet store. (The post was later deleted.) Others have observed her standing in line at a popular bakery. Before the pandemic, she served as a judge for a high school scholarship program run by the founders of “Beach Blanket Babylon,” a now-defunct cabaret.
Lee Houskeeper, a public relations executive and music promoter in San Francisco, said he had met Chapman a few times at her studio and rehearsal space. He said she was very nice and that they had chatted about performing artists they both know.
A state assemblyman, Matt Haney, said he’s only seen her once, at a school board meeting in 2018 when he served on that board. She was there to support the school district naming a theater on its property after her friend Sydney Goldstein. It now houses San Francisco’s popular City Arts & Lectures program.
“She didn’t make a big deal of being there,” Haney recalled in an interview. “I don’t think she even came to the mic.”
Could she return?
The Grammys performance instantly became a career highlight for Chapman, and it could well stoke demand for her return to recording and touring. This year she is also nominated for the Songwriters Hall of Fame. If she is inducted — a good bet — that could provide another opportunity for a public appearance.
“There’s always been demand for Tracy Chapman to return to performing,” Rich McLaughlin, the program director at WFUV, a radio station in New York that celebrates songwriters, said in an email. “Whether or not it will increase the chances of her doing so, however, is difficult to predict.”
Chapman’s longtime fans may have their fingers crossed, but they have also learned patience.
“Tracy Chapman is an artist who follows her muse, not market demand,” McLaughlin added. “If she based her decision solely on demand, she’d have returned to touring years ago.”
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