Luke Combs Admits He Sang the Wrong Lyrics in His ‘Fast Car’ Cover

Country singer Luke Combs revealed he had been incorrectly singing the lyrics to an award-winning song.
During one of his recent concerts, the 34-year-old musician shared that his Grammy-nominated cover of “Fast Car,” originally sung by Tracy Chapman, has an error. Combs said that through a conversation with Chapman, he realized that he mistakenly recorded the lyric “We gotta make a decision” as “Still gotta make a decision.”
“Luckily, she was awesome about it. And I think about it every single time that I sing the 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.”
Instead of performing his recorded version, Combs announced that he would sing Chapman’s original lyrics to rectify his mistake.
“So the version you know is, ‘Still gotta make a decision.’ Not the words,” he said. “It’s just not the words. I made that up in my head.
Combs covered the song as a single for his 2023 studio album “Gettin’ Old.” It rose to the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached the top of the Country Airplay chart.
In July 2023, Chapman told Billboard that she was delighted to see the song was still enjoyed by fans more than three decades later and congratulated Combs on his cover release.
“I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there,” she said. “I’m happy for Luke and his success and grateful that new fans have found and embraced ‘Fast Car.’”
At the 2024 Grammy Awards, Combs and Chapman performed a rendition of the song together.
“When I was 5 years old, my dad and I would be in his truck, and he would always play music for me. He had a Tracy Chapman cassette tape, and ‘Fast Car’ is one of the first songs I remember,“ he said. ”I’ve always been a huge fan of it and think of my dad and our time together when I hear it.”
“I always thought it was one of the best songs of all time, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised,” Combs said about the cover’s success, “but there’s nothing like Tracy’s version, so I thought it would just be a nice complement to the original but never really expected mine to take off quite the way it did.”