State Champ Radio

by DJ Frosty

Current track

Title

Artist

Current show
blank

State Champ Radio Mix

12:00 am 12:00 pm

Current show
blank

State Champ Radio Mix

12:00 am 12:00 pm


2024 GRAMMYs

Tracy Chapman‘s 36-year-old original version of “Fast Car” is coming to radio again.
One of the most beloved moments at the Feb. 4 Grammy Awards was a rare public performance from Chapman, who collaborated with country artist Luke Combs for a duets version of the song. Originally a hit for Chapman in 1988, Combs’ version brought about a chart resurgence of the song last year.

Now, Rhino Records is servicing Chapman’s song to adult alternative, adult contemporary, Americana, classic hits, classic rock, college and non-commercial formats, according to a source. The recording originally came out on Elektra but now falls under Warner Music Group’s catalog division handled by Rhino.

Rhino is also servicing the video of the pair’s Grammy performance and asking radio stations to add the clip to their socials and websites, but there are no plans to make a quality audio version of the clip available to radio.

Trending on Billboard

Following Chapman and Combs’ duet at the Grammys, the original version of “Fast Car” earned 6 million official U.S. streams from Feb. 2 to Feb. 8, marking a 153% rise, according to Luminate. “Fast Car” also earned 35,000 digital downloads, elevating it to the top of the Digital Song Sales chart for the first time.

On Monday (Feb. 5), the day immediately following the Grammys performance, “Fast Car” earned 949,000 official on-demand streams — a 241% increase from the 278,000 it earned the previous Monday (Jan. 29). The song also saw its digital sales surge, rising 38,400% from “a negligible amount to nearly 14,000,” Billboard previously reported on Feb. 7. Combs also saw streams of his version rise 37% to nearly 1.6 million while it was up nearly 3,900% in sales to just over 6,000.

Chapman’s original “Fast Car” also re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 this week, landing at No. 42. Her version had previously appeared on the Hot 100 in October 1988, peaking at No. 6. Combs’ version reached No. 2 on the same chart in 2023.

Assistance in reporting this story was provided by Melinda Newman.

If we’re going to talk snubs and surprises at the Grammys, let’s address the big Latin elephant in the room.
There was very little Latin presence at this year’s Grammy awards. Only three Latin names – Edgar Barrera, Gustavo Dudamel and 123 Andrés – were nominated in non-Latin categories (for songwriter of the year (non-classical), best orchestral performance and best children’s musical album, respectively). The first nomination is a major look, perhaps explained by the fact that this is a relatively new category with a fresh perspective.

And the latter two won – not entirely unsurprising, given Dudamel’s stature and new appointment as the director of the New York Philharmonic. The best children’s album win for 123 Andrés was the most poignant, a sign that the more innocent children’s music perhaps has less barriers.

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

As for the show itself, only 10 to 12 awards of the 91 total are typically given out during the telecast. In his post Grammy column, Bob Lefsetz wrote, “Now if I want to be honest, a lot of other genres were recognized in the pre-show, but unless you won an award, or are related to or work with the winner, no one knows and no one cares. They won’t put this music on the telecast, it’s not broad enough.”

I beg to differ. First, many categories are given out in the pre-telecast simply because only a handful of awards are given out on air. There are many others that many people care about.

When it comes to the Latin music categories historically, however, they have hardly ever made the telecast – despite the fact that Latins now represent nearly 20% of the U.S. population, and that Spanish is the second most-consumed language in music in the country. But, the Grammys aren’t about representation, right? If that were the case, we would be advocating for Latin nominees in every category of the awards, because, well, we’re 20%. But that’s not it.

The Grammys are about quality, and cultural and artistic impact. That’s why the absence of Peso Pluma – a catalyst for the revival of an entire musical genre that has impacted the charts and American consciousness, and whose music is downright dazzling — in the general categories was so jarring.  

The Mexican music superstar’s absence was especially conspicuous in the best new artist category. He was eligible among 405 new artists who competed for those eight slots, but he was not nominated. In fact, only two other artists who perform in Spanish have ever been nominated for best new artist – Rosalía in 2019 and Anitta in 2022, and neither artist won.

Why was Karol G considered good ratings fodder – the stadium headliner was seated at the front of the room and received her award for best música urbana album on air, after all — but was still shut out of any non-Latin category? This, despite the fact that she ended the year at No. 23 on Billboard’s year-end top artists chart, her Mañana Será Bonito was a top 20 album on Billboard’s year-end chart, and she played to sprawling sold-out crowds all year.

Clearly, despite all the positive moves towards diversifying the Recording Academy’s voting body, members are still resisting the concept of including music in Spanish as part of the mainstream. In the entire history of the Grammys, only one album in Spanish has ever received an album of the year nomination: Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Tí in 2023. The last Spanish-language song nominated for song of the year or record of the year was “Despacito” in 2018. It didn’t win in either category, but it got the chance to compete. The importance of those opportunities to participate in the competition cannot be overlooked.

Ironically, the first-ever record and song of the year winner, back when the awards launched in 1959, was an Italian-language song, Domenico Modugno’s “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare).” Then in 1964, the Stan Getz/Astrud Gilberto version of “The Girl From Ipanema” won record of the year. Los Lobos’ hit cover version of Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba” was nominated for both record of the year and song of the year in 1988, and Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” was nominated in those same two categories in 1999 (although Martin’s smash was mostly in English). That’s an awfully short list across 60-plus years, and yet we remain unable to even consider Spanish-language music as a real option in the Big Four.

Yesterday, a major Latin recording artist told me, “How come we never get nominated in the main categories? It makes me really angry.”

It doesn’t make me angry. Just sad.

Leila Cobo is Billboard’s Chief Content Officer for Latin and Español.

The country contingent of this year’s Grammy Awards may be the closest that Nashville ever gets to time travel.
This year’s crop of nominees for the Feb. 4 ceremony includes best new artist candidates Jelly Roll and The War and Treaty, a Dierks Bentley collaboration with Billy Strings, best country album finalists Lainey Wilson and Zach Bryan, and Luke Combs’ remake of “Fast Car.”

Each of those nominations – and most of the other country contenders, too – manage to move in two different directions on the time continuum, pushing the genre into the future while still hanging onto something out of the past.

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

The Grammys, according to John Carter Cash, are drawn to performances that are both “forward-thinking and connecting with the roots.” He should know: He’s nominated as an arranger on a new version of “Folsom Prison Blues” – most closely associated with his father, Johnny Cash – recorded by String Revolution featuring Tommy Emmanuel. The performance is an adventurous instrumental piece that wraps “Folsom” in folk and jazz ideals, absolutely widening the footprint of the song. Yet it remains significantly old-school: the original melody is intact during much of the recording, and it employs guitars that belonged to the Man in Black and his original guitarist, Luther Perkins.

The Grammys come under criticism every year among some country executives and broadcasters because the nominations don’t particularly line up with the biggest current projects in the genre. But that was never the intent of the awards, which are voted on by the creative class, rather than marketers and managers. Those creatives – including musicians, songwriters and producers – tend to reward the craft as much as the commerce, and the slate typically recognizes performances that build on bedrock influences while making a new statement. Sometimes, as in Bryan’s Kacey Musgraves Billboard Hot 100-topping collaboration “I Remember Everything,” that includes some of the most popular current music. But in others, such as Brandy Clark’s twice-nominated “Buried,” that means elevating music from outside the mainstream.

The nominations tend to honor artists and performances that respect the past without being bound by it. That is, to be sure, how the most original artists operate. “If you love country music, and you’re trying to do it, you love the old stuff,” Bentley notes. But “you can’t just go back and redo the old stuff. It’s already been done.”

There are exceptions. Combs’ revision of “Fast Car,” up for best country solo performance, is a faithful update of a classic, though the current circumstances are different: male singer Combs renders it from a different perspective than female originator Tracy Chapman, and it re-emerged in country instead of the folk/pop arena where she introduced it. Solo competitor Dolly Parton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind” is a reworking of a song she first cut with duet partner Porter Wagoner in 1967. And Vince Gill is a best country duo/group finalist with steel guitarist Paul Franklin for bringing attention to “Kissing Your Picture (Is So Cold),” an obscure Ray Price song re-recorded for a tribute album.

 “When I first heard Vince Gill, I thought, ‘Whoa, this is so cool, so new,’ and it was, of course,” Bentley remembers. “Listening to Vince now, that’s nothing but traditional country music, but the way he did it, it felt new. It’s the same thing with Morgan Wallen now. A lot of his songs are super country. My daughter listens to him, she goes, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool and new and different.’ I’m like, ‘That’s pretty country: dobro, and Bryan Sutton on the acoustic.’ So you kind of kind of trick everyone a little bit.”

Carly Pearce’s ability to walk the line between old and new is one of the reasons her Chris Stapleton collaboration “We Don’t Fight Anymore” secured a best country duo/group performance nomination. The spare, acoustic arrangement builds on the genre’s origins, as does its mature lyrical portrait of a debilitated relationship. But the melody and the phrasing are notably modern.

“They’re looking for artistic expression,” Pearce suggests. “That song is one of the most authentic to me, so I think it resonates, obviously, in a commercial way, but more in an artistic way, which is what I love about the Grammys. They see the whole vision of an artist and not just what’s played on the radio. For it to have that marriage together is really [key].”

Even Kelsea Ballerini’s best country album entry Rolling Up the Welcome Mat has that forward-thinking, roots-respecting aura. Compiled as a series of songs that documents her emotional journey following a divorce from Morgan Evans, it mostly features a boundary-testing, pop-leaning sound, though mining her inner world for her art is very much an old-school Hank Williams kind of approach.

“In my brain, it’s like I made a movie,” she says. “It’s solely focusing and zooming in on the songwriting and the storytelling, and to me, that is honoring the genre that I dig my heels into every day. The sonic elements that accompany it, to me, don’t hold as much weight as the story that you’re telling.”

Even personal history can influence the artistic time-machine effect. Songwriter of the year nominee Jessie Jo Dillon (“Memory Lane,” “Halfway To Hell”) compares Jelly Roll’s rise from a prison background and drug abuse to Johnny Cash’s messages about forgiveness. And Wilson sees Jelly Roll’s willingness to mine his experiences as a major influence on the format moving forward.

“Everybody’s past and everything – none of that matters,” she says. “We’ve all done things, we’ve all messed up. It’s about what’s on the inside, and Jelly Roll is nothing but good.”

Ultimately, the creatives who vote for the Grammys all draw from the same musical past as the nominees, and the country finalists list is a qualitative statement about how the genre can continue to evolve.

“It’s very, very difficult to know where you’re going if you don’t know where you come from,” says The War and Treaty’s Michael Trotter Jr. “We like to pay respect, homage, pay a nod to the past — because it’s still our present.”

At the Grammys, that past dictates how country moves into its future.

Hit-Boy reacts to his Grammy nomination, talks about self-releasing music, what sets him apart from other producers, and working with artists such as Nas and Jennifer Lopez. His father, Big Hit, joins in on the conversation and talks about navigating the music industry after spending 12 years in prison, what his life was like while serving his sentence and what their relationship is like now that he is out.Big Hit:Guess I’m to blame, busting that superstar DNA. Big Hit came. Hit-Boy came. Hit-Boy came, C III came. The best is yet to come.

Hit-Boy:Yo, yo. It’s Hit-Boy.

Big Hit:It’s Big Hit.

Hit-Boy & Big Hit: You’re watching Billboard News.

Tetris Kelly:Hey, it’s Tetris with Billboard News, and I have the honor of being with a man that has so many hits, it’s his name. Hit-Boy, man. What’s up? How’s it going?

Hit-Boy:I’m good, man.Tetris Kelly:Let’s talk about this Grammy nomination. Your 11th nomination — producer of the year non-classical. Does it hit any different on your 11th time?

Hit-Boy:Oh, man. It’s crazy because I didn’t expect to … I mean I don’t have no expectations when it comes to, like, awards and stuff like that. But just even being in the nominations, it just hit me this year just because this whole year, I’ve been kind of focusing on things that I can control, which was my own projects, working with my dad, put out a project with Musiq Soulchild, so everything that you know was under me being nominated was mostly stuff that, you know, I really put my heart and soul into, so it did hit different.

Tetris Kelly:And then, I mean, you’ve worked on so many projects this year like you said. How do you feel you stack up when you’re like looking at “I’m going up against Jack Antonoff, you know, my homie from Georgia, Metro Boomin,” like, what do you feel sets you apart as a producer?Watch the full video above!

Nicki Minaj has released a new track titled “Big Foot” which is seemingly in response to Megan Thee Stallion’s recent track “Hiss.” Taylor Swift celebrated the Chiefs’ big AFC Championship win with boyfriend Travis Kelce and fans hope to get a glimpse of the singer at the Super Bowl on February 11th. The 2024 Grammys […]