What I love about 'Midnight Train' is that it's a song about a journey, but the music actually takes you on that journey. It feels like you're moving through the whole song.
— Garth Brooks
I spend most of my time at concerts hoping for that one second that the artist looks at me, I look at the artist, and that's when I get to say, 'Thank you.'
I'm worried a lot of our work day as artists is a producer's creation - not an artist's creation.
With Ghost Tunes, you just try to do what's right. And what's right is whatever the copyright owner wants to do with their music, they do it.
Music should always be first.
I don't think it's changed that much when you go on the principle if Garth introduced more rock into country music, then Florida Georgia Line's gonna introduce more dance and more beat-driven stuff into country music. That's just how it's gonna go. So whatever influences you as a kid, you're gonna put in your music.
We're just a real dirty band. We're raw, and we're rough. None of us are top-scale, top-line musicians. But I tell you what, you get your top-line musicians and see if they can entertain like us.
No offense to music - thank you for Entertainer of the Year and all that stuff. But if you're a father or a mother, there's nothing that beats being a parent, and that's the best time of my life right there.
I wrote 'The River' practically trying to rip off every lick that James Taylor had, so it was neat to hear him sing those lyrics because that's who inspired you to write them.
The dads across the soccer field looked at me as a dad just like them. And I was very grateful.
I feel very lucky to get to fly the flag of RCA Records and Sony Music.
My retiring days are behind me - they're going to have to throw me out now.
Here's my whole marketing idea: treat people the way you want to be treated.
Be with someone who is kind. I think that's it. Just to love one another was the thing I would want to do. It's a thing that you can't stop doing.
I don't care if people remember Garth Brooks.
I just love to see people having a good time.
How many songs in your life were your favorite songs but never were singles on albums?
Music keeps you eternally young. It just does.
Country music is what is sincere; that's the main thing.
Your band members? Your band members don't want to be tied to a machine. They want to be playing. That's what the Beatles did. And the Beatles' stuff is timeless. That's what I would suggest. Just get back to sweating, playing hard, hammering, and having a blast.
I'm gonna stay an album guy. In fact, concept albums are really blowing my mind right now, because if you want to promote an album, think about it - a concept album might be the way to go.
If the artists would just keep hammering away - unify, stick together - then music will become the king again, which is what it should be.
I was lucky enough to go home and raise our babies.
Before the show, we see all these radio people, and most of them say, 'Garth, you're a lot calmer than I thought you were gonna be.' But when the members of the band give one another that handshake, and the lights go out, and the crowd goes up, then you're sliding into the elevator, man, your heart is just going bopbopbopbopbop.
I introduce her as the love of my life everywhere that we go. She introduces me as her current husband. So you can see how the relationship kinda works here.
Why I got into music was James Taylor, so to see him be a real down-to-earth guy that's unbelievably talented... then to hear him sing those lyrics of 'What I'm Thankful For,' which is a song Ms. Yearwood and I got to write together, that was definitely a highlight of my recording life.
Thank God I'm with the love of my life. That's why I know I'm right where I'm supposed to be.
You can't deny RCA's past and its history. I was also on Capitol Records, so I have that past history.
It's the sweetest thing to be a parent of a daughter. When they hit their twenties, they become these lovebugs that come back. It's just so sweet.
In advertising, you have a small window to say the most you can. That's what songwriting is. The difference is, you get to put the leaves on the trees and colour 'em in.
I go home, and I'm a blob. I just lay there and don't do anything - lay by the pool with the other husbands while the wives work. It's fantastic. It's really good. That's kind of our life at home.
Once you've figured out how to wait on people and clean toilets, it makes you very mindful of how you treat the people who are serving you.
People said, 'How could you walk away from music?' But being a dad - there's nothing that can touch that.
That's what you want to do as an older artist - you want to reinvent, but there has to be that vein in there for why people were listening to you before in the first place.
Doing new stuff live is tough just simply because I pay my money, I stand in my seats, and I see the guys I love. And if I paid that ticket, there's a good chance that I'm there to hear the stuff that made me fall in love with 'em - we call it the 'old stuff.'
One of the greatest gifts we have is our own mistakes and somebody singing about them.
All the artists out there, I ask you and beg you: Take over your ship. It's your career. It's your life.
The great thing about albums is it gives you a lot of choices, and we can all say that the album business is dead, but watch Taylor Swift. I don't think it's dead. I just think we've got to hit on the energies that make people want to collect albums.
If you're true to yourself, you just do what you do.
When I went to see Kansas and Queen and Styx, I don't even remember the music. But I know what I saw.
I wouldn't trade a thing. Even the troubles that I had. I have become the husband and mate to my wife that I have because of what I went through, including the bad times. I wouldn't trade that.
Awards are for young people. They just are.
There's always hunger to create because I believe that's what I do. I believe that's what I'm supposed to be doing.
I don't think the label makes the artist or the artist makes the label. It's the music that makes everything work or not.
What you do on tour is you build this 'You and me against the world' thing.
I can take the steel guitars and fiddles off, we can make it a little more pop, cover ideas that are a little less cowboy. But you got to look at yourself in the mirror and ask, whose flag you are under? For Garth Brooks, I'm steel, fiddles, red, white and blue.
I live my life by these little church signs you see as you drive around, and there's one near me that says, 'If we really knew each other, we would neither idolise nor condemn.' And that's it: if we all knew each other, then we wouldn't treat anybody any different. And there wouldn't be any big stars, I guess.
I'm one of those guys who has to have a constant something going inside and in front of my face. If not, I get in trouble.
You can't succeed if you don't know what losing is.
The hardest part about this business is accepting the back end with the same love that you accepted the front end.
