Brooks, Garth
BROOKS, GARTH BROOKS, GARTH (b. Luba, Okla., February 7, energetic of all country performers, although recently 1963) he has descended to such schmaltzy tactics as waving Brooks’s phenomenal success in the early 1990s was and winking at the audience, and blowing air kisses at a combination of genuine talent, shrewd marketing, his fans. and being “in the right place at the right time (with Brooks’s 1992 album, The Chase, reflects a further the right act).” His new-country act draws so much nudging toward mainstream pop, particularly in the on mid-1970s folk-rock and even arena-rock (in its anthemic single “We Shall Be Free,” whose vaguely staging) that it’s hard to think of him as a pure country liberal politics sent shivers of despair through the con- artist. The fact that his early ’90s albums shot to the servative Nashville musical community. Less success- topof the popcharts, outgunning Michael Jackson, ful than his previous releases (although still selling sev- Guns ’n’ Roses, and Bruce Springsteen, underscores eral million copies), it was followed by 1993’s In the fact that Brooks is a pop artist dressed in a cowboy Pieces, featuring a safer selection of high-energy hat. Still, Brooks draws on genuine country traditions, honky-tonk numbers and even the odd “American particularly the HONKY-TONK sound of GEORGE JONES, Honky-Tonk Bar Association,” in which Brooks beats and he’s managed to popularize country music without up on welfare recipients, a shameless attempt to cater diluting the sound. to country’s traditionally conservative audience.
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