Luke Combs Calls ‘Fast Car’ Grammy Duet with Tracy Chapman a ‘Total Pinch Me’ Experience: ‘Amazing’

Two years ago, country star Luke Combs had just about everything going for him: hit singles and albums, industry respect, critical acclaim and an ardent fan base. His road to the future was paved with gold and platinum.

Then along came “Fast Car” to keep his career moving at warp speed. His cover of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 Top 10 breakthrough single, which Combs released in April 2023, made the song a hit all over again — and even eclipsed the chart performance of the original. Combs’ “Fast Car” zoomed to the top of Billboard‘s hot country songs chart (becoming the first song written by a Black female artist to do so) and went to No. 2 on the Hot 100.

The remake’s profile extended its life in the fast lane in February when Combs performed it on the Grammys in a surprise duet with Chapman.

Combs, 34, talks about the “totally pinch me” moment of getting to perform live on the Grammys stage with Chapman in Luke Bryan’s new Hulu docuseries It’s All Country, in which he interviews and hangs out with stars like Wynonna Judd, Sheryl Crow and Combs.

“I listened to that record a lot with my dad,” Combs says of Chapman’s Grammy-winning version, which was released before he was even born. “It just has been this part of my life since the beginning. I had been playing it on the road a decent amount, and people loved it.”

Combs says he didn’t intend to release it as a single, even after putting it on his 2023 album Gettin’ Old: “And then the fans got a hold of it and radio started playing it, even though we weren’t promoting it. Then it just became this kind of unstoppable force.”

The song’s popularity provided a nice profile boost, but Combs calls getting to sing it side by side with Chapman at the 2024 Grammys “one of my favorite moments of my career by a long shot.”

“Man, she was so awesome, so nice.… It was a crazy, crazy experience. It really was. It was just amazing, just for me as a music fan, just total pinch me,” he says in the episode. “I’m really thankful for that song. It’s been a huge part of my life in more ways than one.”

Combs recently revealed to a concert crowd that in his recorded version of “Fast Car,” he got one of Chapman’s original lyrics wrong — he sings “Still gotta make a decision” instead of “We gotta make a decision” — and Chapman herself pointed it out to him.

“That was the first time that I knew that I recorded the song incorrectly,” he told the crowd. “It was her telling me that. Because I remember, when she said that, I wanted to crawl into a hole.”

“Luckily, she was awesome about it,” he continued. “And I think about it every single time that I sing the song, and I will think about it every single time I sing this song for the rest of my whole life. But she was so cool about it.”

It’s All Country is now streaming on Hulu.