I'm a Polish woman, who left communist Poland in 1988 as a child, first for Germany, later for Canada.
I remember my dad buying a Tracy Chapman album for me and my siblings when we were in Germany.
She was completely uknown in Poland and I don't know how popular she was in Germany (I was 9, so just a kid and in the dark regarding pop culture as I didn't speak German at the time)… I sometimes wonder how did my father get around to buying her album, given there was no internet back then…
I never heard about her when we moved to Canada in 1989…
So, was she big in the US back then?