1962-present
Garth Brooks News: Country Singer Denies Sexual Assault Accusations
Country music star Garth Brooks has been accused of rape and sexual assault in a new lawsuit from a former employee. The anonymous woman, identified only as Jane Roe, worked as Brooks’ hair and makeup stylist starting in 2017.
In the lawsuit, filed in California on October 3, she states Brooks subjected her to unwanted sexual advances several times in 2019 and raped her in a Los Angeles hotel room that year. The woman also accuses Brooks of attempting to cover up the alleged harassment by deleting texts from her phone and filing a preemptive legal complaint against her. In a statement also from October 3, the 62-year-old musician admitted to anonymously filing the complaint in September but denied the allegations of abuse against him.
“For the last two months, I have been hassled to no end with threats, lies, and tragic tales of what my future would be if I did not write a check for many millions of dollars,” Brooks said. “Hush money, no matter how much or how little, is still hush money. In my mind, that means I am admitting to behavior I am incapable of—ugly acts no human should ever do to another.”
Who Is Garth Brooks?
Garth Brooks is a Grammy-winning country music star known the songs “Friends in Low Places,” “The Dance,” and “If Tomorrow Never Comes.” His third studio effort, Ropin’ the Wind, was the first country album to debut at No. 1 on the mainstream Billboard 200 chart. He is the only artist in history to have won seven CMA Entertainer of the Year awards and to have eight diamond-certified albums, having sold at least 10 million copies each.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Troyal Garth Brooks
BORN: February 7, 1962
BIRTHPLACE: Tulsa, Oklahoma
SPOUSES: Sandy Mahl (1986-2001) and Trisha Yearwood (2005-present)
CHILDREN: Taylor, August, and Allie
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius
Early Life
Troyal Garth Brooks, better known as Garth Brooks, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on February 7, 1962. His father, Troyal Raymond Brooks Jr., worked for an oil company, and his mother, Colleen McElroy Carroll, was a country singer. He grew up with four older half-siblings—Jim, Jerry, Mike, and Betsy—as well as his older sister Kelly. His brother Mike taught Garth how to play guitar, spawning his path to becoming a musician.
Music Career: Hit Songs and Albums
To start, Brooks sang in bars and clubs while attending Oklahoma State University. In 1987, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, but struggled to get his career off the ground. He worked at a local boot store to make ends meet. With help from music manager Bob Doyle, Brooks signed to Capitol Records in 1988 and released his self-titled first album the following year. His early hits include “If Tomorrow Never Comes” and “The Dance.”
Although sales for the singer’s first album, Garth Brooks (1989), were good, it would have been hard to predict the amazing success of later releases. His second effort, No Fences, released in August 1990 and spent 23 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart thanks to his bar anthem “Friends in Low Places” and “The Thunder Rolls,” among other hits. Within a year, No Fences had sold more than 4 million copies before becoming Brooks’ first diamond-certified album in May 1993. According to the most recent sales data, from February 2020, the album has now sold the equivalent of 18 million copies.
His third album, Ropin’ the Wind, raked in a record-breaking four million orders before its release in September 1991 and became the first album by a country singer to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. His 1998 release, Garth Brooks Double Live, sold over one million copies in its first week of sales, breaking the previous record.
The singer-songwriter’s other hit albums have included The Chase (1992), In Pieces (1993), Fresh Horses (1995), Sevens (1997), and Scarecrow (2001). Brooks’ live concerts have also been extremely successful. An August 7, 1997, concert in New York City’s Central Park drew an estimated 850,000 to 1.2 million people.
First Las Vegas Residency and Tours
In 2009, Brooks accepted a three-year stint for a string of performances at the Wynn Las Vegas. The intimate performances Brooks gave—his set only featured himself and his guitar, as he shared personal life experiences and the importance of his family—resonated with audiences and proved to be a huge success for the artist. The country star played sold-out shows throughout the entirety of his residency. In 2011, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the following year, he became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was inducted by George Strait, James Taylor, and Bob Seger.
For his final show at the Wynn Las Vegas in November 2013, Brooks partnered with CBS for a live broadcast event. The TV special received 9.33 million viewers and claimed the No. 1 spot in the ratings for the night. Years later, the singer inked a record contract with Sony Music Nashville for his first studio album since 2001’s Scarecrow. The album, Man Against Machine, came out in November 2014.
In late 2016, Brooks debuted two new projects: his 10th studio album, Gunslinger, as well as a collaboration with his wife Trisha Yearwood on a collection of holiday standards, Christmas Together. The couple hit the road on the Garth Brooks World Tour with Trisha Yearwood. The tour lasted three and a half years and sold over 6.3 million tickets, making it one of the biggest North American tour’s in history.
In March 2019, Brooks returned to the road on The Garth Brooks Stadium Tour and was later honored with the Entertainer of the Year Award at the Country Music Association Awards for a record seventh time. That year, he also received iHeart Radio’s inaugural Artist of the Decade Award at the iHeart Radio Awards.
Newest Albums
Just after receiving Billboard’s Music Icon Award, Brooks released his long awaited album Fun in November 2020 after experiencing production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. His most recent album, Time Traveler, came out in November 2023. The singer’s 14th studio album was sold as part of a seven-disc boxed set exclusively at Bass Pro Shops.
After completing his three-and-a-half year Stadium Tour, Brooks returned to Las Vegas to begin a Plus One residency at The Colosseum in Caesar’s Palace in May 2023. The residency is expected to conclude in March 2025.
A&E Special Garth Brooks: The Road I’m On
A&E Network’s genre-defining, Emmy Award–winning Biography franchise released the two-part definitive documentary highlighting the prolific career of Brooks, the best-selling solo artist of all time. Garth Brooks: The Road I’m On premiered over two consecutive nights in early December 2019. The documentary offered an intimate look into Brooks’ life as a musician, father, and man as well as the moments that have defined his decade-spanning career and essential hit songs.
Garth Brooks: The Road I’m On chronicled Brooks’ life and career from his early days playing gigs at college bars in Oklahoma and his first unsuccessful trip to Nashville to his record-breaking world tours and balancing family life with global fame. The special highlighted the deeply personal journey and profound legacy of a genre-defining musical figure for the first time. In addition to exclusive interviews with Brooks as he told his life story for the first time, the documentary featured never-before-seen interviews with Trisha Yearwood, Billy Joel, Keith Urban, George Strait, James Taylor, friend and original bandmate Ty England, songwriter Tony Arata, as well as many others from Brooks’ personal and musical family. The documentary also showcased unprecedented access to the seven-time CMA Entertainer of the Year’s current record-setting stadium tour and delved into the stories behind his then-eight diamond-certified albums.
“If I was ever going to do a documentary on my life and music, I wanted A&E to do it,” Brooks said. “They have interviewed all of the people who would know what the true stories are so no matter how this turns out, I can’t say it isn’t the truth.”
Wife Trisha Yearwood and Children
Brooks and country singer Trisha Yearwood first crossed paths during a demo recording in 1987. A decade later, the pair collaborated on the 1997 song “In Another’s Eyes,” which later earned them a Grammy. Brooks and Yearwood wen public with their romance in June 2002 when they made their red carpet debut at the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The couple got engaged in May 2005 and married seven months later in December.
Brooks was previously married to songwriter Sandy Mahl, with whom he shares three children: Taylor, August, and Allie. The couple separated in 1999, nearly 10 years after their 1986 wedding. At the end of 2000, Brooks announced he was taking a break from music to spend more time with his daughters. His divorce from Mahl was finalized the following year.
Quotes
- I think my gift truly is I’m an average guy. What I like, an average guy likes. It’s that simple. The music that I love, I find that most guys around me love, too.
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