Global country superstar Luke Combs now has his own hit with a cover version of Tracy Chapman‘s 1988 top 10 single, “Fast Car.” The song is one Luke says he’s loved ever since he first heard it when he was 5.
“That song’s just been a huge part of my life for a really long time. It’s one of the first songs I remember hearing,” Luke explains. “It’s probably my first favorite song that I ever had. [I] spent tons of time listening to it with my dad in his pickup truck when I was a kid.”
“It just caught my attention,” Luke says of the song, which is about a couple who want to break free of their struggles. “Ever since I could play guitar, it was one of the first songs I wanted to learn … I never forgot it. It never came out of rotation.”
While in college, Luke would cover “Fast Car” all the time, but after he made a video of himself performing it during lockdown, fans called for him to release it.
“The fans were like, ‘Man, you ought to do an official version of this,"” he told reporters. “And … it just finally felt like the right time … and so I’m thankful to have been able to do that.”
Luke also likes to think about all the younger people who haven’t heard the song before.
“I think there will be a lot of people that would be exposed to that song for the first time that will fall in love with it as much as I did,” he notes. “So that was the hopes in recording it.”
You can find “Fast Car” on Luke’s latest album, Gettin’ Old.
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