Dave Short

Classic Albums Revisited:Tracy Chapman: s/t

I remember that I hated this music back in sixth grade. My Social Studies teacher, Mrs. Lewis, had one of those Scholastic Kids News magazines, and she was featured for her political stance. I didn’t care about politics back then; hell, I didn’t even care about girls. All I cared about was playing with dinosaur toys in the mud. Needless to say, I pretty much ignored that day’s lessons. Oh, how I’ve regretted that. It’s taken me six years to re-descover Tracy Chapman’s music.

I was familiar with it, even then. My dad bought this record (it was his first purchase on Compact Disc) because it was a fully digital recording. You know that tiny box on the back of a CD that usually says “AAD”? It means that the album was recorded on analog equpiment, mastered on analog equipment, and released digitally. This record was DDD. I can’t say if its sound quality is ‘better’ than other discs (because I tend to like the sound of vinyl), but it sounds fine to me. I honestly can’t tell the difference between anything digital: 128 kbps MP3’s and CD’s sound the same to me.

But enough of these history and technology lessons. What about the actual record? It is one of the best folk/Americana CDs I’ve heard. Most of this album is Ms. Chapman and acoustic guitar, occasionally joined by a backup band. The songwriting is strong. It’s not only political, it’s personal. There are plenty of political songs, from the opener, “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution”, to the world music tinged-“Mountains ‘o Things.” But there are also some deeply personal songs, too: “Fast Car” and the closer, “For You”, are deeply touching, if not somewhat melancholy, tunes. Chapman manages to forge politics and matters of the heart, and accompany it with brilliant melodies and simple, but effective, acostic guitar.

Perhaps the song that best forges personal and political themes is the chilling a capella “Behind the Wall.” This song is crushing and terrifying. It’s about hearing domestic abuse through the wall of your apartment. The refrain “It won’t do no good to call the police / they always come late / if they come at all” is a sadly true indictment of slow police response times, especially to less affluent neighborhooods. If you can listen to this song and not feel tears welling in your eyes (or at least a deep sadness in your heart) then you’re probably an Evil Assault Android and not a human being.

The standout track is the short, bluesy number called “Why?”. “Why do the babies starve when there’s enough food to feed the world?” It opens. The song is almost a confrontation to world leaders who would rather count money and wage war than help people. The song switches modes (minor to major) in its interludes to convey the Orwellian theme: “Love is hate, war is peace, wrong is yes, we’re all free,” a very effective way to point out the ignorant bliss of most Americans. The song is quite a downer, really, but it gets the blood hot and makes me say, “Yeah! Why?”

But these tracks are really the only downers on an otherwise uplifting record. Despite a palpable sense of helplessness conveyed in her lyrics, there is also a sense of hope, as the opener makes clear. Yes we live in a shitty world, but it can, and will, improve. This record is punk without the sneering and the volume: political, heartfelt, and so honest it can, as with “Behind the Wall”, almost hurt.