“Nobody’s Gonna Care” – Luke Combs’ Producer Tried To Talk Him Out Of Recording His “Fast Car” Cover

Could you imagine a world without Luke Combs’ official cover of “Fast Car?”

Sure, we still would have had the versions uploaded onto YouTube to listen to, but we would have never had the studio recording to jam out to. And more importantly, we would have never seen Combs share the stage with the song’s original artist – Tracy Chapman – at the Grammy Awards.

We got to learn a little bit more of how the studio recording came to be through a Luke Combs interview conducted by none other than living country music legend Garth Brooks. The two stars sat down for an “Artist-to-Artist” conversation on the BIG 615 radio station. Garth launched the station (on TuneIn) in June of 2023, and in his words, it was an effort to take country music to the global scale, while honoring where it comes from (hence the 615 area code).

The radio station is currently in the middle of airing an in-depth discussion that Combs and Brooks shared. The first conversation focused on Combs’ humble beginnings, and the second clip that was shared yesterday showed a backwards-chair-sitting Brooks talk to Combs about Randy Travis’ impact on country music.

In the newest video, the conversation shifted to Combs’ love for music, and how the recent inclusion of “Fast Car” in his album Gettin’ Old surprised pretty much everyone. Garth opened up the discussion by saying:

“One of your biggest successes might not have come from country music, but Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car.’ It took off and it didn’t feel like it was planned. It felt like it caught everybody, including you and the record label, by surprise.”

Combs went on to tell the story of how the cover song came to be, and how his producer Jonathan Singleton almost talked the “Beautiful Crazy” singer out of recording the track:

“We get in and we finish early and Jonathan is like ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘What if we do a cover of Fast Car?’ I wanted to do it for me. I remember Jonathan trying to talk me out of it. He was like, ‘Dude, that song has been covered so many times. Nobody’s gonna care.’

I said, ‘I don’t care if anybody cares. I just want to have it.’ I had been covering it for years in college and it’s always been this really big part of my life. So we did it and it turned out really great. We put the record out and we didn’t promo it or anything and it just took off.”

Good thing Luke Combs stuck to his guns on that one.

And fun fact… Whiskey Riff posted a cover of Luke singing “Fast Car” back in 2018 and the reception from the fans was BONKERS. People were begging for him to take it to the studio for years following that first time he shared it. It might’ve been a shock to Singleton, but we could’ve told you it was gonna be a hit years ago.

Garth praised the decision to ultimately include the cover, and decided to quote another country music legend in order to compliment Combs’ performance of the Tracy Chapman classic:

“I know I instantly thought I loved this guy before, now I really love him. But also, in the words of George Strait, you sing the sh*t out of it too. You did that song justice.”

He sure did.

Combs went on to talk about how great it is that he can perform the cover during his concerts and no one gets upset that he’s playing a song that “isn’t his.” And Brooks piggy-backed on that point by saying that the new, younger generation thinks that’s “Fast Car

” is a Luke Combs song.

Garth might need to pump the brakes (car pun intended) on that one, but every other point he made was very much agreeable. You can hear more of the conversation between Combs and Brooks in the clip below: