Tracy Chapman

Tracy Chapman is concerned on her fourth album, New Beginning. She frets about the
environment. She worries about the state of modern relation-ships. She's even anxious
about the fate of our very souls. Normally such solicitousness is an ominous sign.
Proselytizing tends to bring out the bloat in most artists. Call it Sermon-on-the-Mount-itis. It's
a fate that befalls Chapman for much of New Beginning. Songs like "The Promise"... More >

Beyond thrilling to "Bang Bang Bang" and the inescapable "Fast Car," my only felt insight into Chapman's aura came at a Nelson Mandela tribute where her voice filled the venue, which happened to be Yankee Stadium. Maybe it's a positive that her recordings never convey that kind of size--means she's more modest than her foremothers, Joan Baez and Odetta. But what's left is a joylessly self-sufficient gravity that makes her "heaven's here on earth" sound a lot more pro forma, not to say phonier, than her "The whole world's broke/And it ain't worth fixing." (Grade: B-)