The Chris Gaines Special Offers a Fascinatingly Cringy Look at a Flop of Legendary Proportions
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I’ve written a column on flops for nearly two decades now. That’s a long time! I like to think that I’ve covered many, if not most, of pop culture’s most spectacular fiascos in that time, but I have not covered Garth Brooks’ notorious 1999 vanity project, Garth Brooks in...the Life of Chris Gaines.
There are a few reasons why I haven’t covered one of pop music’s most infamous and embarrassing albums. Though it’s certainly considered a massive flop, Garth Brooks in...the Life of Chris Gaines went double platinum and spawned a top-five hit in the falsetto blue-eyed soul ballad “Lost in You.”
That would be exceptional for most artists. For Brooks in his prime, it was quite poor.
More importantly, on a musical level, Garth Brooks in...the Life of Chris Gaines is incredibly boring. The only notable thing about it is that it’s a surreally misconceived rock and roll concept album from a country superstar.
I have not, and probably will not, cover the album for My World of Flops, but when a kind patron chose the 1999 special Garth Brooks... In the Life of Chris Gaines, I leaped at the opportunity to cover one of the biggest debacles of the past fifty years
In Garth Brooks... In the Life of Chris Gaines, Brooks introduced his short-lived alter ego to a public that had made him one of the biggest country stars, but was understandably skeptical of a project that seemed wildly self-indulgent, even by rock star standards.
The ill-fated, half-forgotten 1999 special functions as both promotion and damage control. During the talking head segments of the special, Brooks clumsily reassures skittish fans nervous about his new direction that while the album cover, concept, and more rock-oriented sound might seem like scary departures, Chris Gaines is actually Garth Brooks, an icon they know and love, and does not make them uncomfortable.
In my favorite moment in the special, Brooks earnestly introduces a song he says is from Gaines’s sophomore album, Fornicopia. When the audience laughs at the terrible wordplay of a fictional album from a non-existent pop star, Brooks mumbles something about fourteen million.
Brooks is referencing his 1991 album Roping the Wind, which went 14 times platinum. That’s good. Remarkably, Brooks has done better. Brooks has released three of the five best-selling country albums of all time.
Brooks’ 1998 live album Double Wide sold a ridiculous 23 million copies.
23 million! Brooks’ second album (his Fornucopia), No Fences, did not fare quite as well. It sold a mere eighteen million copies. I can only imagine how humiliated he must have been.
You know what you can do when you sell that many albums? Whatever the hell you want. That includes testing the patience of your fans, critics, and your record label by releasing a project that marks a distinct departure from the sound and style that made you one of the top-selling artists, regardless of genre, of all time.
Brooks does not have a single writing credit on Garth Brooks in...the Life of Chris Gaines. So it’s not as if he wrote a bunch of rock, R&B, and pop songs and decided that they deviated from his lucrative formula to such an extent that he needed to create a whole new character for them.
Brooks instead had others write non-country songs he could record and release as a character who seems perversely uninteresting on the surface and even more impressively boring underneath.
While performing selections from what is posited as Chris Gaines’ greatest hits album, Brooks dresses exactly like he does when performing country music for live audiences: in black jeans and a black button-down shirt. It's a look that suggests Johnny Cash’s iconic garb if he shopped at Walmart.
The more Brooks talks about Gaines, the duller he makes him seem.
We open with a clearly anxious Brooks telling his audience, “It’s going to be an extremely cool year for me. This is the year I get my chance to play a character in a movie, actually, a fictitious rock legend that has existed for the last fifteen years by the name of Chris Gaines. It’s his music. By the same breath, it’s my music.”
Brooks saying that he is going to have an “extremely cool year” is possibly the dorkiest shit ever. The year turned out to be anything but extremely cool. He also did not get a chance to play a character in a movie because the film where Brooks would be making his starring debut, The Lamb, was never made due to an overwhelming lack of interest and enthusiasm.
Chris Gaines wasn’t something Brooks fans embraced. Instead, it was a misfire they tolerated at best as something he apparently had to get out of his system, despite the country superstar going out of his way to assure his fans that, as with Superman and Clark Kent, Garth Brooks and Chris Gaines looked remarkably alike because they are the same person.
In the kind of sentiment I expect would have been cut if there were any second takes, Brooks says that people ask him what it’s like to play two different characters, and he tells them that he's playing one, because “the Garth Brooks thing is just who I am.”
Phew! For several seconds, I thought that Chris Gaines and Garth Brooks were both fictional characters, wildly different from the artist portraying them. It’s a relief to find out that Garth Brooks is a real person, not a Ziggy Stardust-like alter ego.
On a similar note, the Nathan Rabin thing is just who I am, as well.
This half-assed afterthought of a special combines Brooks performing songs from the Chris Gaines album along with concert banter, Brooks earnestly explaining the project and factoids about Gaines.
These include,
“Chris’ father is Gene Gaines. He was the former coach of the U.S and Olympic swim teams. His mother, Carolyn Johns-Gaines, was a member of the Australian Olympic team.”
“Chris was almost killed in a car crash in 1992. Chris spent the next two years undergoing extensive plastic surgery on his face, shoulder, and hands.”
“The ring Chris wears on his index finger belonged to Crush’s lead singer, Tommy Levitz. Chris got the ring after Tommy’s tragic death in 1986.”
“Chris released his debut album, “Straight Jacket” in 1989. The album spent 224 weeks on Billboard’s Top 200 and won a Grammy for Album of the Year.”
Within Chris Gaines’ dizzying dull mythology, Crush is a band the Australia-born rock star was in as a teenager. With his trademark oafishness, Brooks describes the members of Crush as being “17 or 18” and having a “real intelligent Monkees or a real, intelligent, Beatles kind of feel.”
I cannot imagine what an intelligent version of the Beatles would look and sound like. I guess the twenty seconds or so of Crush goofing around like the Monkees is the closest we’ll come to that impossible ideal.
Deep into a concert where he wears his trademark denim, Brooks volunteers, “Some of you might wonder what this cat looks like” before showing an unintentionally hilarious image of Chris Gaines looking moody with an emo haircut, soul patch, and enigmatic expression.
Brooks offers an exhilarating peek behind the scenes when he reveals that the key to becoming Chris Gaines lies in sucking in his cheeks, making him look thinner and more attractive.
The moonlighting country star says that Chris Gaines “kind of looks like Prince,” only heavier due to all the weight he gained in the car crash that would have figured prominently in The Lamb if it were more than just a beautiful, idiotic dream/delusion.
I like to imagine Prince somehow stumbling across Garth Brooks, saying his alter-ego looks like him and, like Mr. Burns after suffering through The Ramones’ insults, hissing, “Have Randy Travis killed.”
Brooks spends much of the special assuring his massive fanbase that Chris Gaines is the Garth Brooks they know and love, just in a different, more androgynous and Black package.
Needless to say, the “more androgynous and Black” part succeeded in scaring off unadventurous fans who otherwise might be inclined to mindlessly consume anything he puts out.
In one of the only references to the ill-fated movie adaptation of Garth Brooks in...the Life of Chris Gaines, Brooks brags that the young Chris Gaines will be played by the same actor who played the young Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet.
This gets the crowd excited due to their love of Seven Years in Tibet. Alternatively, they may be amused by the same actor playing both Brad Pitt and Garth Brooks.
When Brooks talks about the movie and Chris Gaines, the audience’s lack of interest is palpable. It also feels like maybe we’re supposed to take notes because we’ll be quizzed on the life and times of Chris Gaines once the concert ends.
The Garth Brooks in...the Life of Chris Gaines special is a truly cursed piece of media. It shamelessly shills for a flop album and a movie that never got an opportunity to flop because it was never made.
Brooks bends over backwards to convince his fan that Chris Gaines is exactly like him, that “There’s a ton of Garth in Chris” because “Chris Gaines is Garth Brooks.”
It didn’t matter. Audiences that embraced Brooks as a working-class honky tonk hero were put off by his new direction.
After his flamboyant experiment failed, Brooks had the luxury of going back to a career that, Chris Gaines detour aside, was defined by spectacular success and a keen feel for what the masses want and how to give it to them.
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