Some songs seem timeless and continue to live on through reimagining, and Tracy Chapman’s “Baby Can I Hold You“ is one of them. Shar now takes his turn in that legacy, offering a rock-edged take on the song’s original roots while giving it new life with fresh flourishes of energy and personal artistry.
Shar’s take is no simple cover, but a dialogue between past and present. Chapman’s iconic tenderness is still there, but Shar coats it in his own musical personhood. The result is a performance that’s both dreamy and new, one that connects those who have come of age in different generations but turned to this song in similar times of longing and openness.
Shar’s voice has an earnestness to it that you can feel in every word, and the sound is elevated into a more robust and dramatic direction with the backing instruments. It’s a reminder that great songs change, and continue to live in the hands of artists with enough nerve to reinvent them.
For longtime enthusiasts of the original, this version represents an opportunity to hear it in a different spectrum. Shar’s artistry makes the song resonate, not merely as a cover, but as an authentic forlorn wish and human need. Shar’s “Baby Can I Hold You“ is evidence that paying homage to the past can also mean chiseling out something timelessly your own.
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