Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks came out of Tulsa with a rock and roller's sense of showmanship and a country singer's heart, and by the time No Fences arrived in 1990 the blend was unstoppable. "Friends in Low Places" was its rowdy barroom singalong, traditional country at heart that swung like pop and hit like rock, and that mix made him a crossover phenomenon.

The trophies came fast. The Country Music Association named him Entertainer of the Year in 1991 and again in 1992, and he won the Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 1991. No Fences alone went 17 times platinum, and he became the only artist with nine albums certified Diamond, with more than 170 million records sold.

Torn between career and family, he stepped off the stage and out of the studio in 2001, stayed away until 2005, then eased back with a Las Vegas residency at the Encore Theatre, a world tour with his wife Trisha Yearwood from 2014, a stadium tour and another residency. The Songwriters Hall of Fame took him in, the Country Music Hall of Fame followed a year later, in 2012, and in 2020 the Library of Congress handed him its Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, younger than anyone who had won it before. Time Traveler, in 2023, is his latest album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.