#10: Baby Can I Hold You by Tracy Chapman

City: Burnaby, BC
Radio Station: CFML
Peak Month: January 1989
Peak Position in Burnaby ~ #6
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #48
YouTube: “Baby Can I Hold You”
Lyrics: “Baby Can I Hold You”

Tracy Chapman was born in 1964 in Cleveland, Ohio. Her mother gave her a ukulele to play at the age of three. Her parents were divorced when she was four. Chapman began playing guitar and writing songs at age eight. She says that she may have been first inspired to play the guitar by the television show Hee Haw. Growing up she experienced frequent bullying and racially motivated assaults. She attended Tufts University. Chapman recorded demos of songs at the Tufts University radio station, WMFO, for copyright purposes while she was a student at Tufts, in exchange for the station’s right to play her songs. In 1987, she signed a contract with Elektra Records.
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