Watch Sam Smith Cover Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”

Watch Sam Smith Cover Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”

The 1988 single “Fast Car” is the song that put Tracy Chapman on the map, and it’s a time-capsule memory from a lost era where a sincere folk song about poverty could become a massive crossover hit. (The rap duo Nice & Smooth sampled it on “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow,” one of the great forgotten hits of the early Def Jam era.) During a recent visit to the BBC Live Lounge, the super huge-faced Sam Smith followed the path laid down by so many coffeehouse open-mic-night singer-songwriters before him, trying out his own cover of “Fast Car.” But unlike those coffeehouse types, he radically overhauled the song, with his band giving it a spacious lite-soul arrangement that gave Smith’s voice plenty of room to maneuver. Check out Smith’s live-in-studio cover below.

Smith’s album In The Lonely Hour is out now on Capitol.

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