In 1999, Garth Brooks invented Chris Gaines from whole cloth, in order to explore genres outside of country. (There was also supposed to be a movie, but that didn’t quite work out.) One of the fruits of his labor was this video, a dreamy, melancholy piece, in which he is wholly unrecognizable as himself. The song did well, but faced with a baffled (and possibly somewhat concerned) public and a loss of momentum that came with the disintegration of the movie deal, Brooks let Gaines fade out of sight. The “real” Garth Brooks retired – temporarily – in 2000.
It is, if nothing else, an intriguing meditation on the idea of rock star as illusionist. As I was reading up on the affair to refresh my memory – all I had was the echo of baffled disbelief – any number of people have offered that his mistake was not in inventing a new persona but in revealing that the persona was, in fact, an invention.
http://youtu.be/n_zMEXOsNmU
