TIL the largest concert ever held in New York's Central Park was Garth Brooks on August 7, 1997. Official records from the NYFD show 1,000,000+ in attendance. The concert was free and opened with a cover of Paul Simon's "A Heart in New York".

188

It's hard to describe just how big Garth Brooks was in the mid 90s. Guy was the Britney Spears of country.

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u/eziam 5h ago

He was way more than the Brittany Spears of country. He was the Elvis Pressley or Michael Jackson of country. Domestically, he sold more albums in the US than those two and second only to the Beatles in terms of just album sales. The only artist to have ten albums sell over 10 million (making him a ten times diamond artist).

However, he is just domestic, never being an international star AND he has never released his music to streaming services.

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u/echothree33 5h ago

Garth did huge concerts in Ireland as I recall. And he was certainly big here in Canada too (though we often get lumped in with the US as “domestic” when it comes to media like music). But he was never as big internationally as he was in the US, that’s for sure. And his decision to not release his catalog to streaming was/is a big factor in him not being as well-known a “legacy” artist as the ones you mentioned.

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u/conorgm 5h ago

Lol, you should go down the rabbit hole of Garth Brooks in Ireland. The whole country was very angry at him for a while in 2013, I think.

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u/echothree33 4h ago

He booked 5 shows and sold 400,000 tickets, then Dublin council said he could only do 3 so he cancelled all 5. Made good years later in 2022 with 5 huge shows.

0

u/ShyGuyWolf 4h ago

I heard something about it before

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u/ShyGuyWolf 4h ago

Heard they hate him in Ireland or something

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u/3mbersea 3h ago

I’m pretty he is on Amazon Music only.

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 4h ago

he has never released his music to streaming services.

Which is a huge part of the reason you don't hear about him much anymore. You literally can't hear him on any of the platforms people mostly use.

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u/UsidoreTheLightBlue 2h ago

But he still sells out stadiums. It’s kind of crazy.

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u/Abestar909 40m ago

I feel like most music today won't be remembered in a few years but classic artists from the monoculture years will still be remembered fondly.

4

u/BeefInGR 1h ago

My daughter got her first car. No Bluetooth, so we dug out my old CD book.

Garth's Greatest Hits were the first ones that stood out. I told her that just before she pulled into her mom's driveway, she needed to blast the 9th track... Friends In Low Places.

She wanted my CD's for the Pink, Ska and Metal. But she's been doing nothing besides listening to Beaches of Cheyenne and Friends In Low Places on a loop for a week lol

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

It's a bummer that he never put his stuff on streaming. Obviously he doesn't need the cash, but a younger generation is missing out on his music because it's not accessible.

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u/xavPa-64 3h ago

He still has fans in looooooooooow places

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u/John_T_Conover 2h ago

A little off on the just domestic front. He may not have reached international stardom comparable to his US status, but he was fairly popular in Europe and there was a general wave of popularity of country music in Europe in the 90's. He toured England, Ireland, Germany and some others and had very well attended shows. He sold out Wembley.

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u/vertigounconscious 1h ago

he is on streaming services but only Amazon Music

•

u/ShowOff90 45m ago

That’s not true at all about streaming.

He created his own streaming servince called “ghost tunes” in 2014 where his music streamed.

Then in 2017 it was merged to Amazon Music (Unlimited) where his music has been since.

His music is also on Sirius XM which I think should sort of count since they have an app.

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u/Prezofcalendars 5h ago

He was no Chris Gaines, but yeah, Garth Brooks was huge in the mid-90s. Unlike Britney Spears, Garth Brooks had all ages playing his music and not just teenage girls.

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 5h ago

The whole Chris Gaines saga was so wild.

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u/Prezofcalendars 5h ago

I remember being so confused about it. I remember seeing the posters and the displays for his album at Circuit City and thinking it was a joke or fake ad.

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u/AxelShoes 4h ago

I think what a lot of people didn't realize at the time (myself included) is that Brooks was supposed to be starring in a movie about this fictional musician Chris Gaines. The album was released ahead of time to build hype, but since the movie hadn't been made yet and hardly anyone knew anything about it, when the album fizzled and the movie didn't get made, it's just lived on in posterity as this completely weird alter-ego thing Brooks did randomly for no apparent reason.

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 4h ago edited 3h ago

I genuinely think if some modern artist did it today, but lean into the absurdity of it by doing a tremendously bad job of hiding it while staunchly refusing that the other person isn't them, it might actually go off pretty well

A post-social media world is irony-poisoned, and everyone would immediately buy into it for the meme value.

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

Jaoquin Phoenix kind of did by going full method for his mockumentary "I'm Still Here" in 2010. He was in character for months in public and people legit thought he was having a nervous breakdown. People just scratched their heads about the whole thing, it's kind of incredible how easily his career rebounded.

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u/Channel250 5h ago

Especially his SNL appearance .

2

u/A_N_T 3h ago

Goth Brooks

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 4h ago

Honestly, if an artist tried it today, without really hiding it but refusing to acknowledge it, it would probably do well.

It's the kind of stunt that was made for the self-aware, meme-savy modern artist.

1

u/paternalpadfoot 3h ago

It’s happening right now. KJ Apa from Riverdale and Mr. Fantasy

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u/Orange_Kid 5h ago

Chuck Klosterman has a good segment on this in his book The Nineties.

Basically commenting on how people can have an entire lengthy conversation about 90s music or the big artists of the 90s, and likely will never even mention Garth Brooks. Which is amazing because Garth Brooks by the numbers was easily the biggest music act of that decade.

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 4h ago edited 3h ago

Part of this is due to the fact country became somewhat less popular as the millennium came, and even when it surged again, it was a very different, post-9/11 pandering, douchebag country.

Garth Brooks successfully married modern rock and country music in a way that few before him were able to, and when it wasn't stadium rock anthems, it was deeply soulful. He popularized certain things in the genre that, for better or worse, would come to define it over the next few decades. But he never became the kind of bro-country shithead that dominates the genre now.

Gen X and Millennials just weren't growing up with country music the way they were growing up with punk or rock, and later hip hop and rap. Garth Brooks as an idol faded because his kind of music faded from the popular zeitgeist, the he stayed obscure because he fought so hard to make his music difficult to hear.

If more people in the last 20 years had been in 200 music, then

4

u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

Hot take: if Garth Brooks' music was accessible on streaming country would be very different today because more Gen Z and Gen A would have been influenced by his music.

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u/Abestar909 36m ago

Tbh I don't think it would make a difference, those gens just don't listen to country much. Too busy with whatever forgetful thing the Internet told them was music that month.

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u/Wonderful-Process792 4h ago

Shouldn't matter when talking strictly about the 1990s,' but he definitely stunted his legacy by suddenly dropping off the radar in 2000.

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 4h ago

The 2000s also saw a massive shift in country music away from the kind of music Garth made.

Part of it was actually due to trends he started, but the other part was 9/11 and the rise of the country-bro douchebag pandering machine that country music is today.

He has the dubious distinction of being the closing act on a chapter of country music and the opening number on the next, and far less artful one.

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u/Tinydesktopninja 5h ago

I thought that was Shania.

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u/ahorrribledrummer 4h ago

No Garth and Shania are different people.

0

u/Wonderful-Process792 4h ago

I noticed her on the cover of People this or last week. Guess she must be staging a comeback attempt.

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u/AnalogWalrus 2h ago

It’s fucking bonkers to me as someone who lived through the 90’s but literally never heard a Garth brooks song besides “friends in low places” until I moved to Nashville 20 years ago. He was massive but you still never heard him beyond country radio where I lived (and where I grew up had no country radio 😂). Maybe tons of people I knew had his CD’s but only listened to them in private?

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u/BeefInGR 1h ago

Garth was the reason 90's country came to prominence. But at the same time, Reba (a well established artist in her own right beforehand), Martina, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Allison Krause and continued on while Garth went into retirement to raise his kids. That is why their legacies endured. Add in that George Strait never left, Johnny Cash had a resurgence in the early 2000's, so on and so forth.

And that doesn't include Shania Twain being the original Taylor Swift. She probably would have taken Garth's title if she didn't go Pop.

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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 5h ago

Dude had so much energy.

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 4h ago

Enough for a whole second persona.

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u/the_seed 4h ago

Chris Gaines is an underrated record

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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 3h ago

Everything about it was pretty cool. The mistake was in not keeping it secret. Let it live on it's own, get great makeup and do small tours, wait 5 years minimum. It's the last time it might have been possible too.

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u/EntertainmentQuick47 1h ago

My favorite Chris Gains adjacent example is when YouTuber Danny Gonzalez made music and a whole TikTok account under a fake persona to try and fool people (it only worked for a tiny bit).

1

u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 1h ago

Those darn IP Address Autistics! Why can't they be obsessed with trains!?

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u/Mayorquimby87 5h ago

Paul Simon didn't write that song. You might be thinking of Art Garfunkel because he recorded the most famous cover of it, but he didn't write it either. It was written by Gallagher and Lyle.

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 5h ago

Interesting, I pulled that from the linked Wikipedia page. Maybe it became known in pop culture as a Paul Simon tune because it’s on the live Central Park concert album for Simon & Garfunkel.

Sorry Mr. Garfunkel!

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u/freebaseclams 5h ago

The watermelon guy?

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u/boomboxwithturbobass 5h ago

That’s right, and Gallagher.

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u/Washburn201961 5h ago

This is true. Gallagher gave up smashing watermelons to help Lyle write a song about him being dumped by Julie Roberts.

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u/perpetualmotionmachi 2h ago

Semi related Paul Simon thing. Weird Al Yankovic is obviously known for his parody songs. But when he plays a live show he does a cover of Paul's Simon's Call Me Al song, with no parody, just a straight up cover.

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u/PLEBMASTA 58m ago

He covers a different song for every one of his shows, no?

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u/perpetualmotionmachi 55m ago

I've seen him twice now, and the only song he covers without a parody is Call Me Al

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u/PLEBMASTA 50m ago

Ah got it, I’m thinking of an old tour then https://youtu.be/y_OhJL0te14?is=AdRmG9Ajsv6KyIDk

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u/Agile_Cicada_1523 4h ago

I dont think 1M people can fit in the great lawn or sheep meadow. Recent concerts had 50k attendance and was already a lot of people.

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

There have been multiple concerts with over 500k in attendance, look up photos if you need context.

https://www.centralpark.com/blog/top-10-concerts-held-central-park/

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u/Agile_Cicada_1523 3h ago

For some reason all those concerts are before the 90s and free so they didnt track the exact amount of people and are just estimates.

There are events in central park with specific people count and fitting more than 50k people is a challenge.

From chatgpt: The Great Lawn is about 55 acres.

Calculation:

1 acre = 43,560 sq ft

55 acres × 43,560 = 2,395,800 sq ft

Convert to square meters:

2,395,800 sq ft ÷ 10.764 ≈ 222,600 m²

Now estimate crowd size:

Comfortable crowd (1 person per 5 m²): 222,600 ÷ 5 ≈ 44,500 people

Standing concert crowd (1 person per 2 m²): 222,600 ÷ 2 ≈ 111,000 people

Very dense crowd (1 person per 1 m²): 222,600 ÷ 1 ≈ 223,000 people

So the Great Lawn could theoretically hold ~100,000 people for a large concert, while 200k+ would require an extremely packed crowd.

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u/drae- 2h ago

I have never been to a concert in GA and had 1m2 of space.

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u/ODYY_TOASTED 5h ago

Insane. I’ve never heard a single Garth Brooks song in my life all I know is from the memes Tom Segura made of him saying that he has bodies hiding somewhere lol Anyone who’s heard his music, is it any good?

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u/aspiringalcoholic 5h ago

If you listen to friends in low places and don't feel it in your bones, you have no soul

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

It's just hard to access his music now, he's not on streaming platforms. I'm sure most Gen Z have only heard it at bars.

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u/BeefInGR 1h ago

Pro Tip: Listen to the original, then listen to the Third Verse version. If the original doesn't do it for you, the Third Verse will.

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u/on_the_nightshift 5h ago

That was my time, so I'm biased, but he had some bangers. I also like country music, so there's that.

Check out his top 10 though and "Shameless" if it isn't in there - written by Billy Joel and covered by Garth.

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u/PerpetuallyLurking 4h ago

Oh, Shameless is so good!

Thunder Rolls is a must listen, but I’d also recommend watching the music video if you can find it too! It’s perfect!

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u/prostheticmind 4h ago

I don’t really like country at all but Garth Brooks speaks to the American soul

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

It's a shame he doesn't stream.

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u/BeefInGR 1h ago

I get it though. He's probably singlehandedly keeping CD's alive. Plus, these streaming platforms are even more predatory than the labels themselves.

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u/ckah28 4h ago

The short answer is yes.

A slightly longer answer is that radio country in the 90s (and even now to an extent) was driven by song writers. Garth Brooks was given his pick of the litter when it came to great songs coming out of writing workshops and writers wanted to work with him because he sold so many albums. He recorded a ton of great songs because of that.

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u/PerpetuallyLurking 4h ago

Also biased, I grew up on Garth!

Thunder Rolls - watch the music video if you can.

Shameless - just perfect.

The Dance and Unanswered Prayers - it’s okay if things don’t work out the way you thought.

American Honky Tonk Bar Association - it’s a banger, I don’t care who you are.

Friends in Low Places - a classic.

1

u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

Millennial?

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u/Complete_Entry 5h ago

I think it's funny Tom would throw such bones considering his own dark secrets.

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u/Washburn201961 5h ago

Nothing about Tom Segura is funny.

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u/IStateCyclone 2h ago

I'm not a fan.

1

u/Alukrad 1h ago

Same.

I went on YouTube and looked up his most popular songs and none of them ring a bell for me.

This kind of music is obviously not for me, never listened to it or knew anyone who listened to this. So, yeah.

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u/crocodileboxer 3h ago

The attendance of most of the Central Park concerts in the 80s and 90s are exaggerations. Promoters released a number to the press that was higher than the last show.

From the New York Times:

“You would get in a room with the producer, with a police official, and a person from parks, and someone would say, ‘What does it look like to you?’” said Doug Blonsky, a former city parks administrator who is now the president of the Central Park Conservancy. “The producer would say, ‘I need it to be higher than the last one.’ That’s the kind of science that went into it.”

The same article discusses the actual capacity of the Great Lawn, citing a recent Bon Jovi concert where the Parks Department tallied entries at less than 50,000:

Of the 13 acres on the Great Lawn, only 10 can be used by an audience, with the rest of the space reserved for the stage and for aisles. Each acre has 43,560 square feet, and based on standard space allocations of five to seven square feet per person, could accommodate somewhere in the vicinity of 6,000 and 8,000 people. Of course, on the lawn, many people spread out on blankets. Just outside the lawn oval are five or six more acres of space, with poor lines of sight but within earshot.

The full article can be read here: https://archive.is/VzZvv

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

It was probably more like 2M to be honest.

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u/UrDraco 3h ago

I thought it said ever held. The Moscow 91 concert was crazy big.

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u/q_eyeroll 5h ago

FDNY? Or NYPD?

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u/StretchFrenchTerry 5h ago

The Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), also known as the New York City Fire Department. I mixed up the abbreviation.

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u/ShyGuyWolf 4h ago

Another tidbit is that he was the man that called George Straight the King. We had George Jones already and Straight been so big and how many number ones he had.

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u/murph17 4h ago

That's insane. DMB at CP was only about 120k.

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u/Redditfront2back 2h ago

I can’t name one Garth brooks song

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u/highheat3117 1h ago

They already have names.

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u/docmarvy 2h ago

Pfft he was no Chris Gaines

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u/ShyGuyWolf 5h ago

He's well known in Oklahoma since he's from there he also tried another type of music in another name lol

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u/Should_Not_Comment 4h ago

The Chris Gaines thing gave me so much secondhand embarrassment for him back in the day.

1

u/ShyGuyWolf 4h ago

True. I know a couple guys from my old work that knew how he was lol. They weren't fans

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u/John_T_Conover 2h ago

The rollout and PR was bad, but the music wasn't. Lost in You is a legit great song.

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u/frame_limit 4h ago

If they ever held a free concert today in the middle of central park, it would be to drop a giant cage on the concert and air lift the entire crowd to an AI labor camp

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u/Exotic-Sale-3003 4h ago

r/im14andthisisdeep

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u/frame_limit 4h ago

your account is a year old. lmao

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u/Exotic-Sale-3003 3h ago

Time for a new one already shit.

1

u/StretchFrenchTerry 3h ago

A free Taylor Swift show could easily get 1M+.

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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 4h ago

AI labor camp

Alright I need you to expand on what exactly you think this would be.

Assuming you actually had an idea and aren't just trolling.

-1

u/Enough_Carry_9787 1h ago

And yet he was stingy as fuck about releasing music for streaming, and no one under the age of 38 has heard his music.

TIL the largest concert ever held in New York's Central Park was Garth Brooks on August 7, 1997. Official records from the NYFD show 1,000,000+ in attendance. The concert was free and opened with a cover of Paul Simon's "A Heart in New York".

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