Khalid—a young singer who has the talent and potential to be The Greatest—is still touring on the back of his brilliant 2017 debut, American Teen, picking up Grammy nominations and top-10 hits as he goes. He’s also visited the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge twice now. This morning, the BBC released a video of the 20-year-old covering Tracy Chapman’s 1988 single, “Fast Car.” The decision to play that in the Live Lounge, so often a cultural graveyard, is risky, particularly given that Chapman’s song is regularly tortured by tools with acoustic guitars at open mic nights that you didn’t know you were even attending until your second-beer mellow was broken by an open-G chord. But Khalid pulls it off—he doesn’t try to overdo it with unnecessary vocal frills, and his warmth isn’t broken by Too Much Stuff. Watch it at the top of the page.
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