Cleveland-born singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman has gained some new fans and attention of late thanks to the Luke Combs cover of her hit song “Fast Car.” As a result, Chapman garnered her first No. 1 country hit.
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But with so much history, fans might wonder what the four-time Grammy Award-winning Chapman, 59, has to say about her career, her life, the craft of songwriting, and more. Here, then, are the 20 best quotes on such topics from Tracy Chapman.
1. “We do need to think about how we have security—everyone has a right to that—but we also need to think about how we maintain civil rights and personal freedom.”
2. “As I started to consider a career in music, I hoped for success, truthfully. I didn’t imagine anything that would amass the level of the first record, but I hoped that I would be able to sustain a career.”
3. “Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There’s plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I’m going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.”
4. “I decided to do whatever I could to make sure the business side of music didn’t intrude on the creative part.”
5. “I won’t get into it any more than to say that there are parts of me in all the songs that I write.”
6. “There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere in the world. Everyone wants to do something and feel like they have a sense of purpose. These are just the things that I think about and the things that make their way into my songwriting.”
7. “You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to be able to freely observe the world. That’s the way I like to move through the world; I don’t need to be the focus of attention. If I am, it impairs my ability to write and to do what I do.”
8. “There’s a time and place for everything, and my focus is music. So that’s what I prefer to spend most of my time doing, and not talk about making music.”
9. “I could make records at home in a vacuum, but that is not the situation. I’m just taking it one phase at a time.”
10. “I always considered trying to make a living playing music. But it was always really clear to me, at the various stages in my life, that it really wasn’t a possibility unless some phenomenal thing happened.”
11. “I can’t think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else’s expectations of what you should be. You don’t make art by consensus.”
12. “We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It’s supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.”
13. “Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It’s something I don’t feel like I really control.”
14. “People’s real hopes and dreams can be distorted and misdirected and packaged until you’re not sure what you really want or what you even really need.”
15. “If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you’re willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it’s mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that’s what matters.”
16. “After it’s finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.”
17. “Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don’t usually approach a record as a concept. There’s no overriding theme I’m trying to represent. It’s all about the individual songs.”
18. “I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.”
19. “Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.”
20. “I may be revered or defamed and decried; but I tried to live my life right.”
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