Garth getting emotional (per usual).
An argument could be made for Garth Brooks being the biggest country music stars of all time. Though that might be up for debate, I can tell you one area that the “Friends in Low Places” singer has the all-time title locked down.
No one gets the waterworks going more than Garth.
On the latest installment of Inside Studio G, a weekly show which Garth has done for years and plans on bringing to an end in 2024, Brooks decided to focus in on his latest box set release. There’s three things you can count on in this life… death, taxes, and another Garth Brooks box set.
The Anthology Part IV: Going Home is set to release on December 6th, and will feature never-before-seen photos and stories from when Garth shockingly retired in 2000 and stepped away from music for 14 years.
The timing of the release could be better, as Brooks is currently in the middle of facing sexual assault allegations made by his former hairdresser and makeup artist. The complaint was filed anonymously last month in a California state court. The woman, who identifies herself only as Jane Roe, alleges that the country music superstar raped and sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions, including once while the two were in Los Angeles for a performance. She also claims that Garth expressed his interest in having a threesome with the woman and his wife, Trisha Yearwood.
Garth has addressed those allegations on his show previously, so he didn’t make any of that a part of his most recent episode. Instead, he started out Inside Studio G with a question that a fan had submitted. They asked Garth about what he learned from going back into that time of his life from 2000 to 2014:
“Wednesday is my 50th birthday. I got Anthology IV as a birthday present to myself. I know with the Anthologies, you said you, ‘Learn stories that you didn’t know.’ Did you learn anything new this time since it was your time at home? I know we will learn a lot, and I love reading the stories behind the music.”
When that fan says “at home,” they are referring to the time that Garth spent in Oklahoma with his kids shortly after he retired and was divorced from Sandy Mahl. You could tell that the question was getting him choked up before he even opened his mouth, and when Garth finally did speak, he fought through tears as he said this:
“Yeah I’m kind of embarrassed about this. One of the things you learn first is this whole Anthology IV starts in probably the darkest time of my life. This was tough. This was tough to talk about.
You’re in the triangle, right? You’re in the triangle of retiring, you’re gonna lose your marriage to someone that’s been a really good friend to you for 15 years, and then you are… you lost your mama. It’s just tough. It’s just a dark period of time.”
Garth lost his mom to cancer in 1999, retired in 2000, and then got divorced in 2001. As he described it, it was quite the triangle to go through for someone that was otherwise on top of the world.
What he admitted that he learned was that, with hindsight, he might have handled his retirement announcement at his “100 Million in Sales Celebratory Presser” a bit differently:
“So what I didn’t know is who didn’t know the announcement was coming. I guess I had went over it in my head so much that I just thought everybody knew. So the fact that the retirement at the 100 Million press conference was a surprise to even our people kind of made me feel bad about how it was handled on my side. Looking back, that’s one of the things that caught me off guard.”
Warren Zanes, a musician and author who helped Garth put The Anthology Part IV together, pointed out that he found the juxtaposition of the 100 million in sales moment with everything that Garth was going through behind the scenes to be a particularly interesting part of the anthology.
Garth added that it was a moment in his life where everything that was most important to him became very clear, and he simply acted on that realization:
“The thing I think it showed more than anything was just where your priorities were, and what was important. The 100 Million (milestone), that was sweet. Could not have asked for a better start. Quite possibly the best start in music history for anyone. But the most important thing was my relationship with the girls and their mom.”
You can watch the entire episode of Inside Studio G below: