Tag: Garth

Stephen Deusner’s new entry in the acclaimed 33 ⅓ series examines the megastar’s failed pivot to pop.

The 1990s belonged to American country singer and songwriter Garth Brooks, but his dominance was more or less confined to that decade. He hasn’t faded into obscurity, but one aspect of his decade has: his failed attempt to launch an alter ego for himself as pop star Chris Gaines with the 1999 album Garth Brooks in…the Life of Chris Gaines. (There was also a 1999 TV movie of the same title, directed by Jon Small.)

The lone Gaines release, more or less a lost album, is the subject of music critic Stephen Deusner’s new book, part of the 33 ⅓ series that focuses on deep dives into one release from a noteworthy artist. This enjoyable read doesn’t require the reader to be a Garth Brooks superfan. Countless books are revisiting signature 1990s rock acts, but far fewer take a deep dive into country music, let alone look at a signature artist’s self-inflicted undoing. It’s an interesting angle to revisit the 1990s – a decade that has been strip-mined for book content.

Deusner, whose 2021 book Where the Devil Don’t Stay is the definitive statement on Drive by Truckers, has long been fascinated by the Chris Gaines project. He takes this point of entry to analyze the duality of Garth Brooks, the country superstar and megawatt brand, and Garth Brooks, the KISS-loving slacker who contributed a cover of “Hard Luck Woman” in a 1990s tribute compilation and who would rather spend his days dreaming than doing.

Deusner spent the 1990s as a Garth Brooks fan, bringing a depth of firsthand experience to Garth Brooks in…the Life of Chris Gaines. It is not an outsider’s finger-point-and-chuckle but a nuanced portrait of the essential 1990s music superstar who is spoken of far less often outside of country music circles than other key artists from that decade – despite outselling all of them.

If remembered at all, the Chris Gaines project is often cited as a reason for Garth Brooks’ crest and break. After the project failed, it was all but erased from Brooks’ legacy, unavailable on streaming sites, and absent from Greatest Hits packages. The only reason it comes up at this point in his career is due to Brooks himself, who still speaks wistfully about the project. 

The journey begins in 1997, with Deusner covering a Garth Brooks press conference. At that point, the megastar was working on the Gaines character between tours, planning a move into film, and signing with the San Diego Padres. Brooks was working with Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds on a film called The Lamb, where he was potentially going to play the lead (or not. The project was a perfect example of Brooks’ skittishness at the time). 

The randomness of these pursuits, Deusner posits, is evidence that Brooks was bored with his bulletproof run of tours and albums that had already reached a wider audience than just diehard country fans. Music critic Neil Strauss argued that these moves indicated that Brooks was getting too big for his britches and asked why Brooks needed to pursue the small group of people who weren’t fans by pivoting to pop.

Regardless, by the end of 1999, Garth Brooks’ hot streak was over, and the Gaines project was a major flop that still appears to haunt him, even though he is proud of taking such a big swing. Part of that must surely be the effort he put into creating the Gaines character, who was a brooding Australian with an overtly sexual side and soul patch and bangs that hid some of his face. His love of 1970s rock inspired the album’s music, but the look was inspired by 1990s alt-rocker Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls. Brooks worked on the backstory for Gaines between tours and recording, developing a plan to release multiple albums culminating in a box set.

Deusner points out several ways Garth Brooks failed to be successesful with the Gains project. For example, his press about it was marked by confusion about the division between Brooks and Gaines. Brooks was not good at explaining why he was doing this and who Gaines was. In interviews, he seemed unclear about how he wanted the project to be received by fans. At one point, he considered releasing it anonymously, which might have been a better move, considering that this set of songs took aback fans who loved Brooks’ country anthems. Deusner conducts a thorough and thoughtful reassessment of the record, making a case for it to be at least more readily accessible.

Even though fans and the press were perplexed, Garth Brooks was hardly the only artist at the time seeking to blur the lines between fiction and reality. In 1999, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s The Blair Witch Project initially perplexed audiences with its meticulously created lore, and soon after, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s lineup of characters lived in a blurry space, creations that operated in the real world. Long before Brooks grew his soul patch, David Bowie had a series of identities, including Alladin Sane and the Thin White Duke.

The Life and Times of Chris Gaines is an irresistible subject for a 33 ⅓ book. This is a fascinating look into the life of a megastar and his conflicted nature, a struggle for an artist to reconcile himself as a brand and as an individual. As recently as 2021, Garth Brooks claimed to be working on more Gaines material, so we may not have heard the last of this. As current country music is more willing to swirl in contemporary pop, a renewed Chris Gains project could conceivably be a way back to the spotlight for Brooks. Indeed, a Chris Gaines comeback would be a fun way to end this story, but for now, exploring the wreckage is mightily entertaining.