Luke Combs earned a No. 2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2023 with his rendition of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 pop hit “Fast Car.” His version was named single of the year at the CMA Awards and received a Grammy nomination for Best Country Solo Performance.
However, Combs revealed he recorded one of the song’s lyrics incorrectly — a mistake pointed out by none other than Chapman herself, the song’s sole writer.
During a recent concert, Combs told the crowd that it was a conversation with Chapman that made him realize he had misheard the song’s final line. He had recorded the lyrics as “still gotta make a decision” instead of “we gotta make a decision.”
“That was the first time I knew I had recorded the song incorrectly,” Combs said, according to fan-captured videos. “I remember when she said it, I wanted to crawl in a hole. Luckily, she was awesome about it. I think about it every single time I sing this 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.”
Combs added, “So the words you know as ‘Still gotta make a decision’ is not the words … not the words … I just made that up in my head … so tonight I will probably sing ‘We gotta make a decision’ because Tracy Chapman told me to and damn it, I’m gonna do it.”