It’s boggling that it’s been more than 30 years since Tracy Chapman’s debut. If there has ever been more mature songwriting in first album then be damned if I’ve heard it, and I’ve heard a lot.

The first single was Fast Car and it was a fucking stunner. Didn’t matter if you were black or white or whatever because if you’d grown up working class or poor you’d seen this story play out your whole damn life, but people didn’t so much write songs about us. We weren’t considered worthy of it maybe. You could fit yourself into the lyrics of a thousand other songs and other stories if you were inclined to stretch it, but songwriters hadn’t been writing about us. Not so much anyway. Maybe Bruce Springsteen? Even then, he wasn’t describing the… what will I call it here… hopelessness?

So firsts. I’ve been thinking a lot about firsts today. First time for Baby Can I Hold You: Me and my pal Mikey were way upstate on a mission to… no, let’s call it an escape. A temporary respite. We’re out on a beer run to stock up on alcohol and smokes for me. We’re two guys in our twenties from the same shit town and the same shit sadness. We talked a lot back then about all the things we wanted to see and do. We talked about them like they were actually plans and not pipe dreams. It’s not like either of us had any idea exactly what we were incapable of doing, but the doubt was shared. Nobody we knew had done this shit. This was television shit. This was rich kid shit. All the places we were going to go. All the things we were going to get done. It felt defiant to even talk about it. Hell yes, we would, thinking maybe the sky will open up and the hand of god will come down and give us that chance.

We had discussed Fast Car briefly, agreeing that it was a great song. Not really getting into what made it great, but it was clear. It was a song about us. It rang a bell. So we’re driving along a two-lane somewhere above Glens Falls when Baby Can I Hold You comes on. A look between us and a nod of recognition that we liked this chick and the station wouldn’t be switched. We were riding single-lane in silence on that song, turning it up and I felt it kind of washing over me the way the wind coming through the door windows washed over. Goosebumps for me. Thirty years on and I can remember looking over at my arm propped up in the window and seeing them and feeling the hair on the back of my neck go up. A wave of chills. Bit of a lump in my throat. Wet eyes. I was afraid Mikey would see so I turned and looked out at the passing trees. Just under three minutes but it was the first three minutes in days that we hadn’t said anything to each other. Just under three minutes and the song goes off and I wanted to scream holy fuck but all that came out was a kind of choked wow.

I took a chance to look over at Mikey and he was quickly brushing a tear off his face.

And thirty years on and Tracy Chapman was a few years younger than we were and she was writing stuff that described pain that neither of us could have ever found words for. Not in our most clever moments would we have been so articulate. I’ve heard the song a thousand times since and sometimes I have to be careful where I am if it comes on because you just can’t go getting that lump in the throat and tearing up just anywhere. Where did she even get this stuff on that album? Where did she find the words and melodies. How did she know how to say it all just right?

Mikey and I shared that first together. A few songs had made me cry like that. A few. A few books too. Always in private though. Where we came up if you share a cry with a man you might as well be fucking him, you know? That’s just how it was. We never discussed it and that’s okay too. Not like it’s a secret but it was what we both would have considered a “pussy” moment at that point in our lives. Now in 2019 there’s… well, who the fuck knows if he would even remember it? It doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t. It will always be a magical moment of discovery for me, this song.