Make no mistake about it, Garth Brooks is one of the best musicians in music history in any genre.
If you dont believe me, chew on this: Garth Brooks has sold 128 million records worldwide in his career, which is 3rd in all time music history only behind The Beatles and Elvis Presley. That is just insane and makes me wonder why I haven’t gone and seen him play in Vegas yet!
His success is not only remarkable in the overall 
music picture, but for country music he really put that genre on the map globally. Yes, country music was big in the US for decades, but it was Garth that crossed over and brought his country music to other countries and other music outlets (rock, pop, contemporary).
Whats respectable about Garth is that with this success, he also worked to elevate issues in his song lyrics and videos. The two examples Im sharing today are “Standing Outside the Fire” and “Thunder Rolls”.
With “Standing Outside the Fire” he visually displays the common stereotypes that people with disabilities face and then shows a story of courage and redemption as the protagonist overcomes these obstacles. In doing so he also somewhat comedically highlights classic early 90′s video making including over the top pyrotechnics, bad outfits and exaggerated visuals (ie. the boy who trips on the track then gets up with so much blood on his face it seems like he must have gotten shot).
“Thunder Rolls” on the other hand is less uplifting and also Garth’s most controversial video, and one of the most controversial in music video history. In this story he depicts a cheating husband and a vengeful wife who ultimately invokes her own penalty for his indiscretions. While the video was initially applauded for highlighting the issue of domestic violence, it was ultimately pulled from CMT (Country Music Television) and TNN (The Nashville Network) within 24 hours of its premiere because they thought the violence shown was unnecessary and they didnt feel their networks should be a platform for pushing social awareness agendas. Thankfully times have changed.
Check out these video and share your thoughts. Unfortunately due to what I assume is copyright restrictions none of Garths videos are on YouTube or legitimate websites, so you will have to click on the links below to see the videos because I couldnt embed them. Sorry!
Standing Outside the Fire
Thunder Rolls
put on to the ridiculously amazing cover of this song in the new trailer for The Great Gatsby. ”Love is Blindness” was originally performed by U2 off their classic “Achtung Baby” album, and was covered by Jack White (of White Stripes, Raconteurs, Dead Weather, and general awesomeness fame) for a charity album that came out last year to benefit Concern Worldwide. The album had some amazing artists cover each of the songs from “Achtung Baby”.
