For You

This is my first contribution to Musical Monday and I've been sitting here for a while now, wondering which track to share with you this week. So many songs on so many albums, loved for a multitude of reasons and each one conjuring up their own memories of places, people, tastes, smells...

Anyway, I've stuck a virtual pin into my musical collection and selected For You by Tracy Chapman. In truth, I could equally have chosen any of the other songs on the album. The album was released in March 1988 but I think I must have bought it later that year; sometime around the August, when I moved to Coventry to spend the third year of my degree course working for GEC Plessey Telecommunications Limited. My first few months in Coventry were pretty grim: I disliked my job and had little in common with my work colleagues. Although I got on reasonably well with my two house mates, they were former best friends who had fallen out and were barely on speaking terms; I found myself playing piggy in the middle. Most evenings were spent alone in my room, listening to music and Tracy Chapman's album was definitely in my top five most-played albums of the time.

Life in Coventry got better. I found an evening job working in a local pub and made new friends. The pub had a CD jukebox (one of the first ones I'd seen) and tracks from Tracy Chapman's album formed the backdrop to many an evening.

The songs on the album tackle such issues as domestic violence, racial tension and social injustice, set against the prevailing right-wing political regimes of the time: Reagan in the US and Thatcher in Britain. Politics aside though, the songs can simply be appreciated for their musical merit. For You provides the perfect vehicle for Tracy's beautiful, distinctive voice, set against a simple backdrop of acoustic guitar....




For You - Tracy Chapman (Tracy Chapman, 1988)