Tracy Chapman

Telling Stories is Chapman's first album in over four years. With this collection she has gone back to the spare, unsentimental feel of her early work, recapturing some of the urgency and simple melody lines that made her 1988 self-titled debut such a classic. There's maturity here, and strong sense of spiritual metaphor. On "Unsung Psalm", for instance, she imagines her funeral, singing: "I'd have a halo and flowing white robes / If I live right", while "Wedding Song" has the devotional line: "I reach out for your hand / For you I'd don a veil". The musical arrangements, too, are pared-down, with ghostly bluegrass banjo, silvery fiddle and guitar woven into subtle drum loops. Though not as immediate as her debut, it's Chapman's most focused work in a long time.

Collection is a greatest hits album by Tracy Chapman, it features tracks from her first five studio albums. The tracks include her two U.S. Top Tens, "Fast Car" and "Give Me One Reason". Other charted singles on this album include "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution", "Crossroads", "Telling Stories", and "Baby Can I Hold You".

Tracy Chapman helped restore singer/songwriters to the spotlight in the '80s. The multi-platinum success of Chapman's eponymous 1988 debut was unexpected, and it had lasting impact. Her songs were fresh and powerful, driven by simple melodies and affecting lyrics. At the time of her first album, there were only a handful of artists performing such a style successfully, and her success ushered in a new era of singer/songwriters that lasted well into the '90s. Furthermore, her album helped usher in the era of political correctness - Chapman's liberal politics proved enormously influential on American college campuses in the late '80s. Chapman's subsequent recordings were greeted with mixed reactions, but after several years out of the spotlight, she managed to make a very successful comeback in 1996 with her fourth album, New Beginning"