All The Feels (and then some)

I didn’t watch the Grammy’s live, but I was scrolling social media while it was airing and caught the video of Tracy Chapman performing “Fast Car” with the dreamy-eyed Luke Combs who couldn’t believe he got to share the stage with that beautiful, gleaming legend with her smooth, clear voice and her haunting guitar lick. Combs first heard the song as a 5-year-old, playing on a cassette tape in his dad’s truck. He covered Chapman’s song in 2023.

The crowd went wild when the lights came up and folks realized it was really her, and the look on Tracy’s face was pure transcendence. Ten years since she’s been on a stage. Luke lip-synced during the parts when it was just Tracy singing. Their voices melded beautifully.

I think listening to that song collectively dropped us back in 1988 (those of us who were alive then!) when the world was so, so different. The camera panned over the crowd. There were some big feelings happening.

Tracy and Luke bowed to each other at the end. The standing ovation went on for a while.

Then, later another video popped up in my feed. Joni Mitchell. The songbird, the poet, the magician. The wonder, the icon, the voice of my youth. I remember the first time I heard her sing. It was 1970, and I could hardly believe it was real, her voice was so perfect and pure and sweet.

With Brandi Carlisle and a bunch of young, incredibly talented musicians Joni sang “Both Sides Now,” sitting in a comfy chair, wearing a black bejeweled cap, two long platinum braids draped over her black velvet top adorned with gold stars. She took her time with the words she’d written when she was 24. She tapped her wolf-head cane as she sang. Her whole heart was in it.

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real

Joni Mitchell’s 80 now. She certainly has looked at life from both sides. So have a lot of us.

I was a puddle. I still sort of am. Those songs wove a kind of spell I haven’t quite emerged from yet. I’m caught in a web of nostalgia, homesick for a time that’s gone, and I suppose for a time when the world was still peopled with a lot of folks I love who are no longer here. It’s hard not to be rocked by the velocity of passing years and all they’ve taken.

The enraptured crowd gave Joni an extended standing ovation. She laughed and tapped her cane and offered a knowing smile to the radiant Brandi Carlisle.

We live in such fraught times with so much anxiety and strife. It’s hard to turn off the bombardment of information that is our daily fare.

I think that might be one reason why those two performances were so powerfully felt. Maybe it was just good to let the music and the memories take us, let the poetry enter us, let our feelings remind us. Let each moment bless us.

Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day

Links above take you to The Grammy’s website with videos of the full performances.