Garth Brooks released a new album — but don’t feel bad if you didn’t know about it
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Garth Brooks has never been one to follow convention. In the late 1990s, there was the creation of Chris Gaines, Brooks’ Australian rock star alter ego. And then several years later, after shuttering his own streaming service, GhostTunes, the country superstar signed an exclusive deal with Amazon Music — and you’ll be hard-pressed to find his music anywhere else online. Tickets for his recent stadium tour all cost the same — no matter if you were in the front row or nosebleeds.
Now, the artist has released “Time Traveler,” his 14th studio album. And in true Brooks fashion, the release comes with a little quirk: Only one retailer is selling it.
Related
Where you can find Garth Brooks’ new album
Brooks has made “Time Traveler” available at roughly 170 stores in an exclusive deal with Bass Pro Shops (including Cabela’s). But there’s another catch: To buy the album, you have to buy six other albums with it. “Time Traveler” is part of a seven-disc boxed set titled “The Limited Series,” which includes a few of his more recent albums, according to Brooks’ website.
The new album hit shelves Nov. 7, but even more than a month later, you won’t find much about it online, other than the track list and a review or two.
But in a piece for UPROXX chronicling his journey to get the album(s), Steven Hayden did say this much: “‘Time Traveler’ is a lot better than a Garth Brooks album released exclusively to Bass Pro Shops in 2023 has any right to be.”
What we know about Garth Brooks’ new album, ‘Time Traveler’
“Time Traveler” pays tribute to the different eras of country music, Billboard reported. Brooks has a songwriting credit on half of the album’s 10 tracks. He covers the David Allan Coe song “The Ride,” which tells the story of a hitchhiker’s run-in with the ghost of Hank Williams Sr., and sings Brett Young’s 2018 number “The Ship and the Bottle” with Kelly Clarkson. He sings a duet with Ronnie Dunn of Brooks and Dunn.
“There are a lot of different eras on this album, thus the name,” Brooks said in a statement shared on his website. “Country music’s core is sincerity; after that, you can dress it up a thousand different ways. I am so lucky to live under the flag of country music.”
Related
What else is Garth Brooks up to?
Brooks is also in the middle of a recently extended Las Vegas residency. Compared to his recent stadium tour, it’s a substantially more intimate show — The Colosseum in Vegas seats a little over 4,000, the Deseret News previously reported. And according to Brooks, no two shows are the same.
“Any given song, all 10 band members will be playing and singing, then none of them will be,” Brooks previously told Billboard. “Then maybe percussion and background vocals for ‘The River.’ Or (I’m) talking about George Strait and ‘Amarillo by Morning’ and all of a sudden (Jimmy) Mattingly shows up with the fiddle and it’s just (me) and him. Any given night can have any given variation of any given song.”
Brooks recently concluded the 2023 leg of his residency and resumes his Las Vegas shows in April.
