Here’s why you couldn’t find an official clip of Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs singing “Fast Car” at the Grammys.
SlateAt this year’s Grammys, a lineup of veteran artists blessed the stage at Crypto.com Arena: Joni Mitchell gave her first-ever Grammys performance, Billy Joel debuted his first song in almost two decades, and Tracy Chapman broke a yearslong performing hiatus to team up with country star Luke Combs, who’s found massive success with his Nashville-twanged cover of Chapman’s signature hit, “Fast Car.” But if you didn’t catch Sunday’s ceremony on either CBS or Paramount+, it was—and still is—difficult to find good clips of any of these highlights; the Recording Academy still hasn’t shared any full performances on its YouTube channel. If you want to know how the current leadership of this site is doing, here's Linda Yaccarino with an excited reply to an account that is not Tracy Chapman retweeting obviously copyrighted video posted by a former revenge porn site operator pic.twitter.com/ZFoQSaQuAi — Alex Koppelman February 5, 2024 Brittain wasn’t the only tweeter to put up the Chapman-Combs performance; popular posters like Trung Phan and Yashar Ali also shared the full video. As of Wednesday, however, none of those videos are visible thanks to “a report by the copyright owner.” The copyright ax also fell upon Brittain’s clips of performances by Burna Boy and Joni Mitchell. Whatever the legal merits, it seems strange that, given the massive audience demand for the special Chapman-Combs “Fast Car” duet—a one-time, unique event that doesn’t have an audio equivalent on Spotify—the Recording Academy hasn’t made a full video more widely available across the internet.