The long-awaited vinyl reissue of Tracy Chapman’s debut album released on April 4, 2025!
For anyone looking for a top-quality copy of this legendary album or a replacement for your worn out original 1988 copy, this is your chance to get your hands on this anniversary reissue, prepared for release by Tracy and the album’s original producer, David Kershenbaum, and mastered by Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. The Elektra/Rhino Records vinyl reissue is pressed on 180-gram vinyl and is sourced from an analog master, ensuring the best possible listening quality today.
The wait is over, and expectations have finally been met! Tracy Chapman’s debut album has been a top seller on the Discogs marketplace for years, and was even ranked #4 on the best-selling albums of 2024! Now, you will be able to add a top-quality edition to your collection and enjoy spinning this brand-new reissue on your turntable.
Discover the 4 color editions available below.
Have a look at the official press release below, which we have had the kind permission to share with you.
Special thanks to Tracy and Matthew Rankin for their generosity in entrusting us with the exclusivity of this announcement.
Stay tuned for more information on this release and pre-order details by signing up to the newsletter.
Article summary :
The 4 special editions available for this re-release
The vinyl is available in 4 different versions, the standard black version and colored versions which reproduce the main colors of the album cover. Those colored editions are available exclusively in selected (regional) stores. Each edition comes with a different colored sticker.
The standard 180-gram BLACK vinyl
This edition is available in all music shops, including Amazon.
The indie-exclusive limited edition TRANSPARENT ORANGE vinyl
This edition is available at your local record store.
The indie retail ultra-limited edition OXBLOOD RED vinyl
This edition is available at very few record stores worldwide (HMV in the UK for instance…).
The exclusive OPAQUE ORANGE vinyl
This edition is available at Amazon, Fnac.com (France) and few other stores.
The album packaging will also include an insert with translated lyrics that accompanied the original international release.
Don’t wait too long to place an order, as quantities are more or less limited, even the standard version is advertised as being limited to while stocks last!
Read the official Press Release announcing the vinyl release (published on February 12, 2025)
ELEKTRA/RHINO RECORDS TO REISSUE
TRACY CHAPMAN’S EPONYMOUS 1988 DEBUT ALBUM
ON VINYL ON APRIL 4, 2025 IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 35TH ANNIVERSARY
‘We’ve witnessed the worst this world can throw our way, Chapman suggests on her debut. But the album creates a world where no force exists without a counter. The worst of what we’ve endured, she also offers, makes righteous justice inevitable. It’s a worldview that many could tune into. By the end of the summer of 1988, a few months after the Nelson Mandela tribute, Tracy Chapman was a platinum album and the singer was a star. Chapman came to the world stage with a perspective crystallized in society’s margins. Yet, for all the violence and hopelessness Chapman captures in her lyrics, there’s an equal measure of radical and naive conviction that a more just world is on its way. The album was produced in isolation from popular music, and in defiance of it. She wasn’t a herald of change within the industry so much as she was an example of the innovation to be found outside of it.’ – Pitchfork [January 2019]
On April 4, 2025, Elektra/Rhino Records will reissue Tracy Chapman’s eponymous debut album on vinyl in celebration of its 35th anniversary. Originally released by Elektra Records in April 1988, Tracy Chapman has long been unavailable on vinyl. This anniversary reissue has been prepared for release by Chapman and the album’s original producer, David Kershenbaum, pressed on 180-gram vinyl and sourced from the Bob Ludwig analogue master. The album package will also include an insert of translated lyrics, which accompanied the original international release. Featuring the classic singles ‘Fast Car’, ‘Talkin’ Bout A Revolution’, and ‘Baby Can I Hold You’, the album earned three Grammy Awards and went on to become one of the most successful debuts of all time, peaking at #1 in multiple countries and selling more than 20 million copies worldwide. To this day, it still makes regular appearances on charts around the world, and is one of the most successful albums by a female artist in chart history.
Chapman comments, “I was just out of college when the album came out and for a young singer songwriter it was a dream come true – making a record, recording my own songs, releasing my first album. 1988, that year marked the beginning of what has been a humbling and thrilling experience, seeing fans around the world embrace these 11 songs. I really wanted to mark the 35th anniversary of the album, and so I am grateful to have this opportunity to reissue the record on vinyl.”
At the time of its original release, Rolling Stone wrote, ‘The production is subtle and streamlined, focused unyieldingly on Chapman’s acoustic guitar, her bluesy voice and her carefully wrought tales of characters in contemporary America who seek meaning in the face of society’s fragmentation. Chapman is equally direct about her political beliefs: ‘Poor people gonna rise up/And get their share/Poor people gonna rise up/And take what’s theirs,’ she insists on ‘Talkin’ Bout A Revolution’. Sentiments like these have led critics to view Chapman as a bridge between the Eighties folk revival and the more socially conscious folk movement of the Sixties. What Chapman has going for her is the sheer musicality of her songs and the expressive power of her voice.’ She ended 1988 being named Rolling Stone’s Best New Artist, and in 2021 the album was included in its list of Greatest Albums of All Time, and in 2024 ‘Fast Car’ was included in its list of 100 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Over the course of four decades and eight studio albums, Tracy Chapman has created a body of work that has been as consistently compelling as it is honest and uncompromising, eloquently telling stories with perennial appeal that are at once personal and universal. Impervious to trends, she has commendably stayed her musical course, earning the approbation of fans, critics and peers. Beginning with 1988’s multi-platinum Tracy Chapman, her musical journey has continued with Crossroads (1989), Matters Of The Heart (1992), 1995’s multi-platinum New Beginning (which featured the Grammy-winning single ‘Give Me One Reason’), Telling Stories (2000), Let It Rain (2002), Where You Live (2005), Our Bright Future (2008), and two best-selling compilations, Collection (2001) and Greatest Hits (2015). Along the way, in addition to her four Grammys, Chapman has earned an American Music Award, two Brits, and a Billboard Music Award.
Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Chapman was awarded an academic scholarship to the prestigious Wooster School in Danbury, Connecticut, and later attended Tufts University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology (in 2004 she received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from her alma mater). It was while she was there, in the Boston area, in the late 1980s that she began singing in coffee houses, night clubs and street performing around Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Chapman made her breakthrough performance at Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday concert in London in 1988. In the words of the Guardian, ‘It was during the height of the era of fast-buck capitalism, at a televised concert celebrating Mandela’s birthday, that Chapman came out of nowhere and enthralled the world with her songs about social injustice. Just her, an acoustic guitar and a hushed Wembley Stadium.’ Since then, she has appeared frequently in support of social and humanitarian causes, including Amnesty International’s Human Rights Now! Tour, the annual Bridge School benefit concerts, the Nelson Mandela Free South Africa Concert, Farm Aid, Tibetan Freedom Festival, Vote for Change, the Driving Votes tour, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and many others. Chapman made her theater debut composing the music for a new production of Athol Fugard’s classic 1961 play Blood Knot, which opened at San Francisco’s A.C.T. in 2008, and was directed by Charles Randolph-Wright. In 2012, Chapman performed at the 35th annual Kennedy Center Honors as part of the Buddy Guy tribute. In 2014, she sat on the domestic documentary jury at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2015, she was invited by David Letterman to sing ‘Stand By Me’ during his final season hosting The Late Show, commanding a stage entirely on her own for an emotional performance of a classic song. In November 2020, the night before the US federal elections, Chapman performed ‘Talkin’ Bout A Revolution’ on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Myers to encourage voter participation.
In February 2024, Chapman made a surprise appearance at the 66th Grammy Awards, collaborating with country superstar Luke Combs for an unforgettable duet of ‘Fast Car’. The performance was historic, representing a moment of confluence, coming 35 years to the month since Chapman first performed ‘Fast Car’ at the Grammys and after a year of unprecedented success for Combs with the song. Introduced to a new audience, ‘Fast Car’ achieved new chart peaks across genres (including #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs and #2 on the Hot 100), and won two awards at the 2023 CMA Awards (notably Song of the Year for Chapman, who made history as the first Black songwriter to win in the category). Following the Grammy performance, Chapman’s original version re-entered charts around the world (including the Hot 100), as did her debut album. The New York Times wrote, ‘The song felt incredibly spacious – larger than the limitations of genre, welcoming and expansive enough to hold every single person it had ever touched, regardless of the markers of identity that so often divide us. It was a rare reminder of music’s unique ability to obliterate external differences. ‘Fast Car’ is about something more internal and universal. It is a song about the wants and needs that make us human: the desire to be happy, to be loved, to be free.’
By the end of the year, the Grammy performance had made Google’s top 5 trending songs as part of its Year in Search 2024, and ‘Fast Car’ recently entered Spotify’s Billions Club. The performance also topped the New Yorker’s list of Best Performances of 2024, where it was described as “Five and a half blissful minutes. Chapman was back, her voice as lucid and knowing as ever. Combs gazed at her with fanboy reverence as they traded lyrics that told a poignant story. The duet gave the impression – as fleeting as that joyride in the fast car – that one great song could bridge America’s divisions.”
Side One
- Talkin’ Bout A Revolution (2:38)
- Fast Car (4:58)
- Across The Lines (3:22)
- Behind The Wall (1:46)
- Baby Can I Hold You (3:16)
Side Two
- Mountains O’ Things (4:37)
- She’s Got Her Ticket (3:54)
- Why? (2:01)
- For My Lover (3:15)
- If Not Now… (2:55)
- For You (3:09)
Words and music by Tracy Chapman
Produced by David Kershenbaum for SBK Record Productions Inc.
Executive producers: Don Rubin and Brian Koppelman
Engineered and mixed by Kevin W. Smith
Recorded and mixed at POWERTRAX, Hollywood, CA
Mastered at Masterdisk by Bob Ludwig
Art direction: Carol Bobolts
Photography: Matt Mahurin
Musicians: Tracy Chapman, Ed Black, Paulinho Da Costa, Denny Fongheiser, Jack Holder, Steve Kaplan, Larry Klein, David LaFlamme, Bob Marlette
Reissue produced for release by Tracy Chapman and David Kershenbaum
Vinyl reissue mastered by Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering
Project support: Karina Beznicki, David Bither, Maya Bouvier-Lyons, Joseph Cacciola, Andrew Campbell, Teri Eastwood Molls, Lisa Glines, Lauren Papapietro, Matthew Rankin, Rory Wilson
www.rhino.com
Read the official PR telling about the behind the scenes of the vinyl re-release (published on March 31, 2025)
TRACY CHAPMAN | TRACY CHAPMAN
35 TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
On April 4, 2025, a classic returns; the vinyl reissue of Tracy Chapman, the singer-songwriter’s multiplatinum 1988 debut album.
In the works since 2022, Chapman approached the record label to consider re-releasing the vinyl to mark a major milestone, the 35 th anniversary of its first release. Having heard from record collecting friends that the album was hard to find in good condition, Chapman set out to make a high-quality reissue, faithful to the original in the sound of the vinyl and the look of the package.
Assisting with the reissue was David Kershenbaum, the original producer of the album. His production credits include Joan Baez, Duran Duran, Joe Jackson, Cat Stevens and Supertramp, as well as Chapman’s follow-up albums Crossroads (1989) and Telling Stories (2000). Prior to this project, he had also helped her assemble the 2015 Greatest Hits compilation. They were longtime colleagues who had also become lifelong friends.
“The two of us have stayed in touch over the years,” says Chapman. “He has a combination of technical ability, emotional intelligence and a great sense of humor. The studio can be an intimidating place, but he made me feel comfortable.”
Undertaking this project with Chapman, the multiple Grammy-winning producer Kershenbaum says, “We work well together. We always did. This was a challenge, but we were on the same page: it had to be great; it had to be true to form.”
A search of the Warner Music Group archives uncovered an original Bob Ludwig master, which they brought to veteran audio engineer Bernie Grundman in Los Angeles to create a new lacquer.
“Our one requirement,” continues Kershenbaum, “was that this reissue sound as good or better than the original pressing. Over the years, technology changes, the vinyl changes, the process of stamping records changes. We worked hard, going back and forth comparing the original vinyl record with what we were doing. I had a process where I recorded each test pressing as well as the original onto my studio system and A/B’ed them. They got pretty close very quickly, but there were some things we wanted to correct, and we spent a lot of time doing that. Tracy was very, very careful. We don’t want to disappoint people. It wasn’t the quickest process, but I think the quality will show.”
With the test pressings approved at the end of 2023, the process for completing the artwork became the focus. To that end, Spark Los Angeles handled printing the inner sleeve, ably selecting a paper and ink combination to address color shift issues that can occur due to optical brighteners found in today’s paper stock. The highly regarded Optimal Media in Germany created a new die for the cardboard cover to match the size and scale of the original image. Chapman wanted the evocative close-up cover portrait taken by New York City photographer Matt Mahurin to be reproduced so as not to distort the image in any way; the same went for the beautiful inner sleeve shot of a shyly smiling Chapman.
The resulting package is itself a work of art, not something to be tucked away on a shelf, an album-cover image that has become almost as iconic as the music itself. Not to be confused with the recent Argentinian bootleg, this 35th anniversary edition package also includes an insert that had only been included on international editions of the original album, with the lyrics translated into French, German, Italian and Spanish.
The international audience was key to Chapman’s initial success. There from the beginning of Chapman’s career, David Bither, currently president of Nonesuch Records, was at that time head of international at Elektra, her longtime label, and she asked him to consult on this reissue. As Bither says, “I vividly recall first hearing Tracy’s debut recording in a staff meeting at Elektra. You could tell from the look on the face of Bob Krasnow, the chairman of Elektra, that he was about to play something very special. Tracy’s voice and her songs were completely original and so powerful, with a timelessness that harkened back to Elektra’s roots as a folk music label but with a currency that was relevant that very day – while sounding like nothing else in the contemporary marketplace. Krasnow knew, and he was very supportive of Tracy from the beginning. Tracy’s first performances upon the release of the album were in a small venue in London, the Donmar Warehouse. It was the beginning of a journey that led just a few months later to her appearance at the Wembley Stadium concert for Nelson Mandela, which introduced to the world an artist whose impact remains indelible 37 years later.”
Since 1988, Tracy Chapman has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful debut albums of all time and one of the most successful by a female artist in chart history. Underscoring its staying power and resonance, to this day it still regularly charts globally, as does the single “Fast Car”, which achieved new peaks across multiple genres most recently with the version by country superstar Luke Combs.
In February 2024, Chapman made a surprise appearance at the 66th Grammy Awards, duetting with Combs for an unforgettable performance of “Fast Car”, which also reunited her with the album’s original rhythm section, drummer Denny Fongheiser and bassist Larry Klein. It represented a moment of confluence, coming 35 years to the month since Tracy first performed “Fast Car” at the Grammys and after a year of unprecedented success for Combs with her song. In the preceding months, “Fast Car” won two awards at the 2023 CMA Awards, notably Song of the Year for Chapman, who made history as the first Black songwriter to win in the category.
Arranged with elegant simplicity, the 11 songs on Tracy Chapman possess deep emotional power. Chapman reflects:
“I wrote “Talkin’ Bout A Revolution” when I was 16 years old and at that time, like a lot of teenagers, you think that you are able to will the world to be as you want it to be. I really did have this notion, a belief that with the raising of consciousness change would come, where people wouldn’t have to march in the streets for their civil rights. While it’s gratifying as a songwriter to know that something I wrote more than 30 years ago still seems to have some relevance today, from a human rights perspective it’s disheartening. So many of the songs on the record, a song like “Fast Car” for instance, are aspirational in nature. I still believe that we can come to a better place.”
Chapman acknowledges, “It takes a team to bring together a reissue like this. It wouldn’t have been possible without key people at Rhino, Nonesuch, Optimal and Spark, and without the support and efforts of David Kershenbaum, David Bither and Matthew Rankin.”
Rankin, an SVP at Nonesuch, first worked with Chapman at Elektra and has remained close to her, helping manage several projects, including this reissue. He was also instrumental in arranging Chapman’s lauded return to the Grammy stage, which was the culmination of long and very careful planning, in addition to successful teamwork. “This reissue has emphasized a number of full-circle moments, including reconnecting Tracy with friends and colleagues from throughout her career,” Rankin notes. “The last couple of years have underlined the fact that relationships matter.”
Bither observes, “It came as no surprise that Tracy dedicated so much time and care to the re-release of Tracy Chapman on vinyl; she pored over every element of the package and the music to do justice to that landmark record. Holding it in my hands after all these years is a reminder that this reissue is both long overdue and exactly on time.”
Chapman concludes:
“There isn’t anything I would change about the album. I’m not saying that because I think it’s perfect; I can hear my mistakes even years later. But, even with that, between the process and the outcome, we made something that I was not only proud of back then, but that I am to this day. It was a labor of love.”
– Michael Hill (3/25)
PRESS ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS TO PROMOTE THE RELEASE OF THE 35th ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF TRACY CHAPMAN’S DEBUT ALBUM
- Zadie Smith on the magic of Tracy Chapman: ‘She didn’t just look like us – she was singing our songs’ – The Guardian – March 31, 2025
- Tracy Chapman wants to speak for herself – New York Times – April 4, 2025
- Tracy Chapman: “Sognavo un mondo più giusto ma la strada è lunga” – La Repubblica – April 4, 2025
- Tracy Chapman on Revisiting Her Self-Titled Debut Album, 37 Years Later: ‘I’m Just So Proud of It’ – Billboard – April 5, 2025
- Tracy Chapman on re-releasing her self-titled 1988 debut album on vinyl – NPR Weekend Edition Sunday – April 6, 2025
- Tracy Chapman on the vinyl re-release of her bestselling debut album – BBC Radio 4 – Front Row – April 9, 2025
- Tracy Chapman wrote her life-changing hit Fast Car in one night – Q With Tom Power, CBC – April 11, 2025
- Tracy Chapman, tras 17 años sin publicar disco: “Me preocupa la democracia en Estados Unidos” – El País – April 13, 2025
- Tracy Chapman : “Je n’ai pas peur de Trump mais je suis inquiète pour la démocratie” – Télérama – April 17, 2025
