If you go to a Luke Combs show this year, you might notice that he’s made a change to one of the lines he sings in his hit cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”
In the recording, in one verse, Combs sings, “Still gotta make a decision / Leave tonight or live and die this way.”
But now, he’s changed the words to “We gotta make a decision” — a small change that he says he made because he got the words wrong in the first place.
Onstage at a recent show, Combs explained the lyrics switch, admitting that he was mortified when Chapman herself corrected his lyrics.
“She said, ‘So, when you recorded the song, you said ‘Still gotta make a decision‘ instead of ‘We gotta make a decision.’ And that was the first time that I knew that I recorded the song incorrectly,” the singer told the crowd.
“I remember when she said it, I wanted to crawl in a hole,” he admits.
Chapman was “awesome” about Combs’ mistake, but he says he still feels the embarrassment of getting the words wrong to a song he loves and wanted to cover faithfully.
“I think about it every single time that I sing the song, and I will think about it every time that I sing the song for the rest of my whole life,” he says, cracking up. “… The version you know … not the words. It’s just not the words. I 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,” he concludes.
Combs fans already have a pretty good idea about why getting the words to “Fast Car” right is so important to the country star.
Read More: Why Luke Combs Stayed True to the Original “Fast Car” Lyrics
He’s said that he decided to cover the song out of complete admiration, and he wanted to be “mega respectful” to the original version. Combs’ love for “Fast Car” dates back to his childhood, when he used to listen to Chapman’s original recording while riding around in the backseat of his dad’s truck.
With that in mind, he preserved Chapman’s original lyrics in his recording, including keeping some female pronouns in the song.
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After meeting at a music festival in 2016, Luke Combs and his wife Nicole has been inseparable. The two were engaged by 2018 and tied the knot in 2020. Fast-forward four years and the couple are now proud parents of two little boys, Tex Lawrence and Beau Lee. Despite the rapid pace of their relationship, Luke and Nicole Combs remain one of the cutest and most devoted couples in country music, and these photos prove it.