BABBLING BROOKS
Country music superstar streams his thoughts about cowboy hats, the truth behind Trump rumour
Garth Brooks was recently looking at the internet when he saw a false story that country music icon Charley Pride had died.
“I slammed the laptop and Miss Yearwood said, ` What's wrong?'” Brooks recalled in a phone interview, referring to his wife, fellow superstar Trisha Yearwood. “I said, `Charley Pride passed away. I blew it. I've had a song I wanted to sing with him for 10 years and my lazy a-- didn't get it done ...”
The next day, he found out Pride was still alive. He reached out to the 86-year-old Pride to duet on a song called Where the Cross Don't Burn, about the friendship between a young white boy and an older Black man. It appears on Brooks's new studio album, Fun.
Brooks, the top-selling solo artist of all time, is known for (a) huge concert tours and ( b) his desire for unity and bringing everyone together. But even the famously apolitical star couldn't escape the extreme current political divisiveness. First, people were furious in February when they thought Brooks endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, because he wore a jersey honouring former Lions running back Barry Sanders. Then, social media erupted in September when Politico reported Brooks was asked to star in the Trump administration's campaign to “defeat despair” about the pandemic. The story didn't say he agreed to it, but fans proclaimed their devastation as they assumed Brooks was a Trump supporter.
Brooks laughs. “I was lucky enough to be raised with a very strong foundation of, `Look, as long as you know who you are, it doesn't matter if the rest of the world knows who you are, or thinks they know you and they're wrong.'”
He says he was embarrassed for anyone caught up in the Sanders misunderstanding. As for “the rest of the stuff,” Brooks said, “you walk in with a cowboy hat, and immediately, you're put in this kind of category that might not be who you are.”
The singer still seems unsure of what even happened with the Trump pandemic-ad situation. “All I know is my publicist sent us this thing that said, `Hey look, I'm not sure what this is coming from, so I'm going to pass on it.' I never even saw it. I said, `OK.' But this must be what it was — nobody's asked me about it until now,” Brooks said.
“My crew knows what's important for me, and so the things that really hit home, like the changes in music law, stuff like this that affects songwriters, they fill me in on it. But the rest of the stuff, they kind of know that if I want to dig into it, I'll dig into it. But with as much misinformation that's going on out there, it kind of is a deterrent to scan the headlines.”
The singer also sounded grateful for his legion of loyal fans who clarified on social media that the Politico story didn't say he agreed to participate.
“That's another thing, too, you find as an artist: Your own people that follow you, that love the music, they kind of even and police everything out,” he said. “They take great care of me, and I feel very lucky.”
Despite the fiercely divisive times, several songs on the album urge listeners to join together to try to improve themselves and the lives of others. “It's a message that this world would run a lot more smoothly if we just could find the patience,” Brooks said. “It's the empathy and the sympathy for what someone else is going through.”
Your own people that follow you, that love the music, they kind of even and police everything out. They take great care of me, and I feel very lucky.