Garth Brooks Rebuilds, Rebrands

When Garth Brooks resumed making music in 2014 after a 14-year sabbatical, the top-selling solo artist in U.S. history returned to an industry where everything had changed.

The musician, whose brand of country is strongly influenced by pop and rock, redefined the very concept of being a commercial superstar. It might be hard to remember, given Brooks’ long layoff, but his album sales — over 136 million in the United States alone — exceed even those of Elvis Presley, and are second only to The Beatles.

Over the two years since his comeback, Brooks has sold nearly 5 million concert tickets in 50 cities.

Album sales have fallen off precipitously in the digital age, with physical albums themselves heading down the road to becoming an endangered species. On radio and CMT, the type of pop-country Brooks popularized has given way to a shallower, arguably sillier, twangy pop that’s increasingly generic and disposable.

So where does Brooks fit in today? In popular music, even five years is a long time. But 14 years might as well be a century. Brooks was 38 when he announced his retirement, 52 when he released his comeback album, 2014’s “Man Against Machine,” and 54 now.

Brooks’ place in modern music has yet to be definitively answered, and it’s possible even he hasn’t quite figured it out yet.

If he wanted to, he could just follow in the late-career footsteps of Billy Joel, one of Brooks’ biggest influences. Like Joel, Brooks could just rely on his massive catalog of hits — including “Friends in Low Places,” “The Dance,” “The Thunder Rolls,” “Unanswered Prayers,” and “More than a Memory,” just to name a few — and pack arenas while rarely (if ever) recording again.

As Joel has figured out, you don’t make your money on record sales these days. Streaming creates very little revenue, and piracy eats up much of what isn’t being streamed. Both Joel and Brooks already made untold millions on record sales and royalties. Now the money’s all made in performing.

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But Joel’s 67 — no one expects him to be a still-vibrant artist anymore, and he’s barely recorded anything in more than two decades anyway. For Brooks to come out of retirement just to go the “play all the old hits” route would seem like a bit of a waste.

Over the weekend, artists such as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, and The Who played the first segment of the Desert Trip festival in California — and they’re all old enough to be Brooks’ dad. That leaves Brooks in a strange limbo: a little too old to easily connect with pop-country music fans, a little too young to be a nostalgia act.

Not that anyone should feel bad for Brooks, of course — he’ll be the first to tell you he’s a lucky guy. He’s incredibly wealthy. He’s married to talented country music singer Trisha Yearwood. He retired on his own terms, choosing to step aside from recording and touring to focus on helping raise the three daughters he had with his first wife, songwriter Sandy Mahl. In 2013, he became a grandfather.

If there’s any question whether Brooks has a place in today’s musical landscape, it’s not a matter of popularity: The fans who sang along to the hits from the ’90s still show up in droves.

Over the two years since his comeback, Brooks has sold nearly 5 million concert tickets in 50 cities. According to The Tennessean, he broke ticket sales records in 40 of the 50 venues.

Related: Garth Brooks: Come Back Kid 

But musically — well, that’s a different story. Even among his Brooks’ biggest fans, few can forget 1999’s catastrophic “Chris Gaines” experiment, in which he reinvented himself as a rock musician with the aforementioned pseudonym.

The accompanying album just wasn’t very good, and coming while Brooks’ popularity was still close to its peak, the concept was seen by many as the height of self-indulgence. (His makeover as “Gaines,” replete with a wig full of bangs and a soul patch, surely didn’t help.)

Brooks’ final album (as himself) pre-hiatus, “Scarecrow,” also didn’t resonate as much as classics such as “No Fences” and “Ropin’ the Wind,” but it did much better than many might remember, selling more than 5 million units.

“Man Against Machine,” on the other hand, can be fairly labeled a commercial disaster in the context of Brooks’ career. The 2014 comeback album never got close to selling a million units — even the derided Chris Gaines album, “Greatest Hits,” sold three times as many.

The album got moderately decent reviews, pretty much on par with the rest of Brooks’ catalog. The problem was twofold. First, radio had moved on, and Brooks just couldn’t get much airplay with his new stuff. Second, he chose not to use traditional digital music services such as iTunes.

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Instead, Brooks founded his own digital music service, GhostTunes, and included his entire catalog there. But GhostTunes didn’t include streaming, which was quickly becoming the norm for popular digital music.

For now, you still can’t get Brooks’ music digitally on any streaming service or major digital store, although the artist has indicated that will change — an announcement is expected soon. As much as popular artists might dislike the royalties systems with services such as Spotify and Pandora, it’s hard to fight the power when that’s where all listeners are. Even The Beatles eventually joined, providing a massive renewal of appreciation for their already popular catalog.

Brooks might still be getting used to the current music climate, but he’s working on it. He’ll be performing a free concert Oct. 24 at Tennessee’s state Capitol in Nashville, part of a state-sponsored celebration of the artist. And there’s a still-untitled new solo album nearing release, plus a Christmas album of duets with Yearwood.

However, Brooks being Brooks, he’s parted ways with RCA Nashville and plans to release both albums on his own label, Pearl Records. That might make it even trickier to connect with modern fans — but when you’re Garth Brooks, you can afford to do things your own way.