Garth Brooks is arguably the most successful country artist of all time. With over 150 million units sold, he clocks in at number one all time in terms of country music artists, ahead of legends like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire and more.
What’s more is that Garth Brooks is also leading all genres of music with a whopping NINE Diamond-Certified albums, beating out The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles and more. This would be an amazing track record for anyone, but even now, he’s packing out stadiums across the country, regularly playing for crowds of more than 50,000 people, and breaking records week in and week out.
Garth Brooks is truly a music legend. Chris Gaines may not have been able to reach the same fate as Garth Brooks. How could he? It’s not like Chris Gaines and Garth Brooks are the same person, right?
Let’s just say that if you’ve never really dove into the Chris Gaines story, it’s WILD.
We’re talking sex, trauma, death, car crashes, plane crashes, house fires, scandals… the VH1 Chris Gaines special might be the greatest documentary in the history of the world.
In fact, it might even be the greatest piece of filmmaking in the history of the world.
It chronicles the weird, full throttle, and completely insane (fake) life of Chris Gaines. It even featured appearances from folks like Billy Joel and “girlfriend” Maria Costa (Yes, Chris dated actress Maria Costa).
And while Garth’s team has done a great job of wiping it from the internet, you can find pieces of it out there.
A few years back, Chris Stapleton sat down with Joe Rogan for an episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, and the two got to talking about what an absolutely insane idea that was.
The conversation started with Joe and Chris talking about artists that get comfortable in their career, never take chances, and wind up hating their own career, even if they’re making a lot of money.
Joe didn’t hold back on Garth’s Chris Gaines character: “Like when Garth Brooks put on that wig and pretended to be that other dude. Remember that part? Remember that thing? I love when someone goes like woah woah way off the reservation. I’m not a Garth Brooks hater, I think it’s just a colossal f*ck-up that I think is hilarious.”
Try as they might, the record label still has left pieces of Chris Gaines out there as many YouTubers even post up about this very odd time in Garth’s career.
Chris Stapleton weighed in: “I think at the time that he did that, he had to be into ‘what in the world else can I do? The only way I can become more successful is come someone else and make them successful, but he was so successful and still is in that space that he can’t be any bigger than he is.”
