We call them fools who have to dance within the flame

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

06/02/94 : In Pieces - Garth Brooks


Garth is quite possibly the best selling artist we have yet to meet here and I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of listening to one of his albums. Whenever I've heard some of his music, I've considered it to be bearable but unremarkable, but maybe a whole album's worth will help me understand what I've been missing.

Hmmm - well, it's OK, I guess. It's definitely country based but it was also leaning in to Billy Joel more than I was expecting - without being anywhere near as good, obviously. Garth has a nicer voice than I was aware of though, so I might be tempted to check out his best-of, but I am slightly concerned that "American Honky-Tonk Bar Association" was playing hard to the MAGA crowd before they even had a name. So all in all, I'm undecided and unconverted - but there's certainly no danger I feel I've been missing out all these years.

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a thirteen week run (which was longer than I was expecting) with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Tori Amos (a new entry), Chaka Demus & Pliers, a Diana Ross best-of and Mariah Carey, with the next highest new entry being ZZ Top (#11 - a group we have yet to meet).

Wikipedia tells us this is his fifth album and has remarkably little else of any interest in there - Garth sounds very pleased with the album but I get the impression he probably isn't overly burdened by critical introspection. Others were pretty nice about it to with our old mate Robert Christgau loving it and even NME giving it 6/10. Commercially, it did surprisingly well over here even before it was released, topping our country album chart (and you have to wonder what sort of stuff ends up on there) before it was even released here, purely on imports from the US and Ireland. However, it did somewhat better over the pond than it did here, getting to #1 and selling TEN MILLION copies over there - madness, I tell you.

For something that sold so many, discogs.com has remarkably few copies which means you'll have to spend 40 Euro (there are no copies available in the UK) to pick up a copy - which seems nuts, but it's nothing like the 150 Euro you can spend if you really want to. I admit I enjoyed this more than I was expecting to but I remain perplexed as to quite why he's as huge as he still is.

30/01/94 - You can't begrudge them their moment in the spotlight
13/02/94 - Lovely piano, but challenging lyrics

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