Garth Brooks Tickets

Garth Brooks has dominated the country charts by combining pop and rock sounds, eventually making his way to the pop world with lots of success, amassing 70 hit singles and 115 million albums sold in the U.S.

Brooks grew up in Oklahoma with his country-singer mother, Colleen Carroll. The aspiring artist toured clubs and bars after graduating from Oklahoma State University, failing at first to gain a record contract. After joining forces with Trisha Yearwood in 1987, the pair agreed to help each other in their careers, and they started to take off.

The country singers self-titled debut was released in 1989, and was critically and commercially successful. His first round of hit singles included "If Tomorrow Never Comes" and "The Dance." Brooks second album, "No Fences," was released in 1990 and sat on the top of the Billboard country music chart for 23 weeks. The album became his highest-selling effort, as it included his signature song, "Friends in Low Places."

Brooks continued to release hit albums, and his musical styles certainly ran the gamut - he offered up honky-tonk tracks, pop-country and gospel-country-rock. When Brooks released "The Chase" in 1992, it became his fifth album on the Billboards top 50 pop albums chart, which was a first for any modern artist.

The hits kept coming - he released "In Pieces" in 1993, which was extremely popular in the UK, which led to a massive tour of the area in 1994. Later that year, Brooks got in touch with his inner rocker - he appeared on "Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved." He turned "Hard Luck Woman" into a country hit, but it failed to chart.

The legendary artist continued releasing hits and touring - he set a record in 1997 with a free concert in New York Citys Central Park. The show brought close to a million fans, plus 14.6 million viewers who watched the show on HBO.

In 1999, Brooks really took an interest in the rock side of music by creating the alter ego Chris Gaines. He released the album "Garth Brooks in?The Life of Chris Gaines." The idea of this fictional rock singer wasnt exactly a commercial success, although critics gave Brooks credit for thinking outside-the-box.

In 2000, Brooks announced that he was retiring from recording and performing. He said that he wanted to focus on his family. He married Trisha Yearwood in 2005, and that same year he made a partial comeback. He made a deal with Wal-Mart to release his back catalogue, and the superstore began releasing "The Limited Series," which included some previously unreleased Brooks tunes.

In the summer of 2007, Brooks announced that he would release a new boxed set, "The Ultimate Hits," which includes three discs with 30 hits, plus a DVD of music videos and four new songs, including "More Than a Memory" and a duet with Hey Lewis.

Throughout his career, Brooks has been known to create a very lively atmosphere in his live shows - he uses a wireless headset so that he can run around the stage, bringing the energy of a rock show to a country crowd.