Garth Brooks' Gershwin Prize Telecast Doesn't Live Up to His Entertaining Status

by Julian Spivey
Garth Brooks is considered by many to be the most entertaining performer in the history of country music, but the PBS concert special that aired on Sunday, March 29 in which Brooks was honored with the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song was anything but entertaining.

The prestigious event took place at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. on March 4 shortly before the entire world seemingly came to a halt due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The evening began with a rip-roaring collaboration between Brooks and country music hitmaker Keith Urban doing the 1993 no. 1 “Ain’t Going Down (‘Til the Sun Comes Up)”. It seemed like the perfect wat t kickoff the night.

As is the case in most of these honors a multitude of performers came on stage to perform some of Brooks’ greatest hits in front of him.

Chris Stapleton would follow with great performances of “Rodeo,” Brooks’ top-five hit from 1991, and then “Shameless,” the Billy Joel-penned song that Brooks would score a no. 1 with also in 1991.

Keb Mo would take the stage for a performance of Brooks’ 1992 no. 1 hit “The River” and then Urban would return to the stage for “We Shall Be Free,” which thanks to some unnecessary controversy via country radio was the only single Brooks would release from the start of his career in 1989 until 1995 that didn’t reach the top-10.

Lee Brice would perform Brooks’ most recent no. 1 “More Than a Memory,” which he co-wrote with Billy Montana and Kyle Jacobs, and was basically the highlight of Brooks’ first minor comeback in 2007. It was at this point that I realized many of Brooks’ biggest and best songs weren’t being played.

That feeling was momentarily laid to rest when Country Music Hall of Famer Ricky Skaggs, he only veteran of the genre appearing during the night, brought out his mandolin for a terrific performance of “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” which Brooks took to no. 2 in 1994.

Brooks’ wife and ‘90s country superstar on her own right Trisha Yearwood then took the stage and things got really sappy with her singing personal love songs to Brooks.

Following these performances Brooks accepted his honor with a short speech and began to perform for the second-half of the two-hour special. This is where things completely left the format you typically see at these events.

This must have been Brooks’ choice, because I guarantee artists would have been lining up to perform his greatest hits in his honor.

For what seemed to last forever while watching Brooks would take queues from his Las Vegas residency in which he performed songs from his many influences, except he only played snippets of classics like Jim Croce’s “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels),” Don McLean’s “Vincent,” Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home,” Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine,” Cat Stevens’ “Wild World,” Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and more.

I understand why Brooks wanted to pay tribute to his songwriting influences in an event celebrating his songwriting, but it just made for a boring, uninteresting broadcast. If he had chosen one or two songs to perform in their entirety.
Once Brooks finished this medley of hits from his legendary influences the show ended on a good note with him performing a run of his hits like the 1993 no. 1 “That Summer” and the 1991 modern classic “The Thunder Rolls.”

Brooks told the audience filled with political luminaries that one of the things he dreamed of as a young man was being able to write a song that could be sung by everybody in an audience and he launched into 1990’s “Friends in Low Places,” which has become such a classic that Sirius XM recently named it the greatest song in country music history. I just take one little issue with Brooks’ statement … he didn’t write or co-write “Friends in Low Places,” it was written by Dewayne Blackwell and Earl Bud Lee.

He would finish the special with a performance of “The Dance,” one of the songs he’s definitely most synonymous with but is also a song he didn’t write or co-write – it was written by Tony Arata.

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