Self-Titled Summer | Tracy Chapman (1988, US)

Our next Self-Titled Summer spotlight is on number 821 on The List, submitted by shiawase. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Point of origin(s): Born in Cleveland in 1964, Tracy Chapman started playing guitar and writing songs when she was only 8 years old. Chapman performed as a busker while studying anthropology at Tufts University and got her first airplay on the university’s radio station, WMFO, where she recorded her first demos. As with Suzanne Vega whose s/t debut we looked at last week, Chapman’s first official release was on a Fast Folk comp, specifically “For My Lover” on their April 1986 issue. The following year, another Tufts student saw Chapman playing at a local coffeehouse and afterwards repeatedly tried to convince her to record demos that he could pass onto his father, a music producer and executive. Chapman declined but, when this student heard WMFO already had demo tapes, he stole one from the radio station (“Talkin’ Bout a Revolution”) and got a copy to his father. This quickly led to Chapman signing a contract with Elektra Records and, the following year, this s/t – Chapman’s debut – was released. Within 4 months, it had sold 1 million copies.
• Tasting notes: Sincere, elegant, impeccable folk rock that tells stories and makes statements (and where said statements are still necessary to make, sigh)
• Standout track: Each song is a gem, side A is particularly loaded with “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” then the mega-hit “Fast Car” then “Across the Lines” and “Behind the Wall”.
• Where are they now?: Chapman essentially experienced instant stardom with the s/t album, particularly after performing at Nelson Mandela’s 70th Birthday Tribute concert in June of the same year. She received three Grammies for the album, including one for “Fast Car”. While her debut is still considered by some to remain her best album, Chapman continued to release incredibly solid studio albums on a semi-regular basis, up until the 8th in 2008, Our Bright Future. While Chapman has remained active in a number of political and social causes and has popped up on late night TV a couple times, she has just recently experienced a new burst of well-deserved attention. In 2023, after Luke Combs’ cover of “Fast Car” blew up, Chapman became the first Black woman to get a song to number one on the country charts, and then the first Black woman to get a Country Music Association Award. This led to a joint performance at the 2024 Grammies with both Combs and Chapman (and therefore to many of us scratching our heads as to who Luke Combs was…), 35 years after Chapman had won a Grammy for her original performance of the song.
• Websites: Wikipedia

Happy listening!

• Songlink: Tracy Chapman – Tracy Chapman
• Discogs: Tracy Chapman – Tracy Chapman

#1980s #FastFolkMusicalMagazine #folkRock #ListenToThis #music #musicDiscovery #TracyChapman

Self-Titled Summer | Suzanne Vega (1985, US)

Our next Self-Titled Summer spotlight is on number 820 on The List, submitted by shiawase. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Point of origin(s): Born in California (in 1959) and raised in New York City, as a college student singer-songwriter Vega became part of the folk music revival and Greenwich Village music scene boom of the early 80s. Vega was part of Jack Hardy‘s songwriters’ group at the Cornelia Street Cafe, from which a cooperative and monthly anthology (The CooP/Fast Folk Musical Magazine) arose to give an outlet for independent artists to perform and put out their first recordings. Vega’s first was “Cracking” on the inaugural Fast Folk comp (February 1982), followed by a handful of other songs on subsequent Fast Folk issues over the next three years.[1] A year after Vega was signed to A&M Records, in May 1985 she released this, her debut album, which includes most of those Fast Folk songs (with the exception of “Tom’s Diner” and “Gypsy”, both of which would end up on Vega’s second album) plus more. Vega also performed the entire album (plus “Tom’s Diner” and “Gypsy”, as well as some great monologues) as a solo acoustic set at the SpeakEasy club in Greenwich Village the week the s/t came out. This lovely performance was released as a radio broadcast to promote the album; in 2014, the recording was finally released as an album (though possibly unofficially?), Live at the Speakeasy (also found under the title Live in New York 1985).
• Tasting notes: Masterful storytelling via stripped-back contemporary folk/neo-folk, acoustic guitar
• Standout track: The album’s first single, “Marlene on the Wall”; also “Small Blue Thing” and “The Queen and the Soldier”. I also really dig all the live Speakeasy versions.
• Where are they now?: Vega’s s/t was a hit, as was her addition to the Pretty in Pink soundtrack (“Left of Center“) in 1986 and then her second album, Solitude Standing (1987). In 1989, she became the very first woman to headline the Glastonbury Festival. The following year then saw Vega’s biggest hit – indeed what most people know her for – being a remix of “Tom’s Diner” by British electronic dance duo DNA. Though originally showing up in clubs as an unsolicited bootleg titled “Oh Susanne”, Vega soon gave DNA permission for an official release. Around the same time, this song garnered Vega fame for a rather random reason, as the original a cappella version was used as the test song when the MP3 format was being developed by Karlheinz Brandenburg, particularly to see how the human voice fared with its compression algorithm. Brandenburg refined the algorithm until Vega’s voice sounded right, and christened Vega “Mother of the MP3”.
  Vega has gone on to do many other wonderful things, including: experimenting with the folk genre, winning many awards, being featured on a number of soundtracks, becoming a published author, becoming a playwright (with “Barely Breathing” Duncan Sheik!), hosting a Peabody Award-winning radio series, acting in an off-Broadway musical, and starting her own recording label and re-recording her back catalogue.
  Vega just released her 10th studio album this last May, Flying with Angels, and is currently touring it with dates in Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, England, and Scotland still to come.
• Websites: Artist website, Bandcamp, Wikipedia

Happy listening!

• Songlink: Suzanne Vega – Suzanne Vega
• Discogs: Suzanne Vega – Suzanne Vega

#1980s #FastFolkMusicalMagazine #folk #folkMusic #GreenwichVillage #ListenToThis #music #musicDiscovery #selftitled #singerSongwriter #SuzanneVega