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Tracy
Chapman
Telling Stories
By Carla Robinson
Tracy Chapman’s boldest assertion might be true-maybe she was born to
fight. How else could we explain her twelve-year presence in the music business? Telling
Stories is her fifth LP, and no one could have seriously thought she’d be around this
long.
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With “Fast Car,” she was such a gifted curiosity that we had to
buy Tracy Chapman to see what more she had to say. We were like canines. We heard a pitch
that was unfamiliar to our ears but intimate to our hearts and we knew it was made only
for our kind. Something in our gut told us that it was the sound of the home-going
trumpet.
On Telling Stories, Chapman sounds the horn again. And while some may mewl over her
failure to break new ground, I say - rejoice. Not every song is remarkable, but there is
plenty that is lush and pretty, insightful and healing.
“Unsung Psalm,” for example, laments the peril of falling short of a decorous
life, while “Telling Stories” reminds us that there is only perception:
“There is fiction in the space between the lines on your page of memories/Write it
down but it doesn’t mean you’re not just telling stories.”
So our girl proves, yet again, that she is out there, navigating choppy waters so that she
can bring us back to ourselves. We don’t turn to her for innovation. We turn to her
because she is a steady place for us to fall. And I say we need her. M
March 2000
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