Garth Brooks megalomaniac?

If you're ever peer pressured into karaoke (or drunk enough to do it willingly), the easiest way not to make a fool of yourself is to sing Friends In Low Places. If it's late enough, all you have to do is get it started and the crowd will take over from there.

A lot of years ago, a bunch of us were at a country concert at Verizon Center; I can't even remember who. Maybe Alan Jackson. Anyway, after the show, there's about a million people packed into the metro station waiting for the train. My one buddy starts singing Friends In Low Places. Within seconds, the entire crowd was singing along. Oddly incredible scene.

 

Worth asking if Garth will be remembered by music history - or by the record business. I have a sense of him as a huge seller, but not as a musical innovator.

Is he both?

 

I met Garth Brooks at the W.Va State fair around 1990 ... It was right before his career went Supernova.
I think at the time his big hit was The Dance.
My buddy worked for a radio station and was supposed to interview him before his show.
"Wanna go meet Garth Brooks," he asked.
"Who? Uh... Ok?" I didn't listen to country music at the time and had NO idea who he was talking about.
He was pretty low-key and nice enough. Again, this was before he became HUGE.

 

My first words this morning were I'm Much Too Young To Feel This Damn Old.

 

Unrelated to Garth Brooks ...

I could listen to Darius Rucker sing Wagon Wheel alllllllll day.

 

I grew up strapped in to the backseat of my mom's Town & Country minivan, and that bitch forced me to listen to Garth Brooks every goddamn day. She's from Wisconsin, so she had no excuse.

That being said, "Papa Loved Mama" was great, and I loved the funny/violent lyrics after spending way too much time listening to his schmaltz. "Rodeo" was pretty awesome, too.

I don't know about Garth being a megalomaniac, though. Weird as shit, sure. But the dude tried to donate a kidney (I think it was?), he gives a shit ton of money to charity, and who the hell spends 20 years with someone if he/she is that bad? You don't.

 

I think he will be remembered as one of the guys who really brought Country to a mainstream audience.

That's a pretty big legacy, even if his songs are mostly pop.

 

I dunno ... Wisconsin ...
If anyone can pen the right (country) lyrics and music to set the mood to make love to a deer carcass it's Garth Brooks.

 

^^^^ This

 

You calling Marsha a deer fucker?

 

He sued a hospital last year because it did not name it after his mother. He'd donated $500,000 and the jury awarded him an additional $500,000 in "punitive damages."

Jury member Beverly Lacy said she voted in favor of Brooks because she thought the hospital went back on its word. As far as the punitive damages, she said: 'We wanted to show them not to do that anymore to anyone else.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091437/Garth-brooks-wins-1m-fight-hospital-centre-late-mother-built.html

I am a big Garth fan but I was utterly shocked that anyone would sue a hospital -- especially for punitive damages -- because of its name.

 

Dolly, Willie, Kenny Rogers, Eddie Rabbitt, the Oak Ridge Boys and 'Urban Cowboy' had done so long since. Hell, Barbara Mandrell's network television series debuted in 1980.