The media's outrage over country singer Luke Combs climbing the charts with his cover of Tracy Chapman's 1988 pop hit "Fast Car" highlights its obsession with injecting race into everything and trying to further divide Americans, critics said Monday.
On "The Five," the panel discussed how outlets like the Washington Post claimed the country singer's present-day success is "complicated" given the fact Chapman is a "Black, queer woman."
The Post claimed Chapman would have had "almost zero chance" of such success in country music by herself, which Judge Jeanine Pirro said is "ridiculous idea," – especially since Chapman has praised Combs and said she is happy to see him succeed with the cover.
"I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there," Chapman told Billboard earlier this month, adding she is "grateful" that a new generation of listeners have embraced her 35-year-old hit in a new form.
LUKE COMBS ‘FAST CAR’ SUCCESS MARRED BY RACIAL DEBATE: WAPO
Combs returned the gratitude, telling Billboard it is "so cool that Tracy is getting recognized and has reached new milestones," adding he appreciated her shout-out of him.
"The Five" host Dana Perino agreed with Pirro, adding that the media appears to enjoy trying to "figure out a way… to create some outrage so that [they] can make money getting people divided against each other."
Perino said recent changes to Associated Press style capitalizing ‘Black’ and ‘White’ are another example of accentuating race in a story.
"They look so ridiculous at The Washington Post because Tracy Chapman didn't want to be on the country charts back [in 1988]," Perino added.
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She said the media could have instead taken the tact of expressing how "cool" it is to see a Black artist's pop song being covered by a White country star – adding that there have been many past examples of people from different backgrounds and genres covering each others' songs.
In 2013, "Hootie & The Blowfish" frontman Darius Rucker, who is Black, rocketed to the top of the charts with his country cover of White artist Bob Dylan and Old Crow Medicine Show's 1973 hit "Wagon Wheel."
The song, which describes a lonesome hitchhiker trying to make his way southward from the Northeast through Roanoke to Raleigh to meet his lover in the North Carolina capital, remains a staple of country radio a decade later.
More recently, country star Cole Swindell incorporated melodies and lyrics from Jo Dee Messina's 1996 hit "Heads Carolina, Tails California" with his Billboard Country Airplay #1 hit "She Had Me at ‘Heads Carolina’." A remix featuring Messina was released later in 2022.
There have been many cross-genre covers of hit songs like "Fast Car" as well, including Jimmy Buffett's tropical take on Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl," which is often a concert staple for the renowned "Coral Reefers" leader.
"[W]e're all better off for it because usually the covers are giving the original artists some very good credit," Perino said on "The Five."
Pirro noted that Chapman also gets a "bulk" of the share of what she reported has been an estimate $500,000 in royalties thus far from Combs' cover.
Jesse Watters added "Fast Car" is not the first instance of the media wrongly creating divisive headlines, reading through several others he said were similarly ridiculous.
"White Flight, How Aerosmith Made Run-D.M.C. Walk This Way," Watters read. "My final one from the Post is ‘If DeSantis Is Elected, Elton John Won’t Be Allowed to Marry."
"These people are way down the rabbit hole," he said, adding that he was a Tracy Chapman fan in the 1980s and had no idea nor did he care that she is Black or what her sexuality is.
"And then when I found out a couple of years ago, I was like, 'Great'."
