Garth Brooks rewrote all the rules of country music, and that goes for concerts as well as recordings. It was Brooks who brought the scale, energy, excitement, and pageantry of a major rock concert to the world of country, and tons of Nashville superstars have been following his example ever since.

It's not insignificant that he was one of the first country stars to popularize the wireless microphone onstage, because the ability to race around the stage like a country Bruce Springsteen and get the crowd fired up is an important part of Brooks' concert agenda.

Since his 2014 comeback with Man Against Machine, his tours have been bigger than ever. His World Tour that began in 2014 lasted all the way through 2017 and became one of the biggest-grossing concert tours ever. When his 2019 Stadium Tour was announced, with plans to bring his bigger-than-life live show to some 30 stadiums, it became obvious that Brooks still had no intentions whatsoever of slowing down.

Garth Brooks on Tour

In country music, you can pretty much divide history into two eras: BG and AG — Before and After Garth. When he exploded onto the scene with his self-titled 1989 debut album (eventually awarded coveted Diamond status), Garth Brooks completely changed the game. In the years to come, with chart-topping singles like "Friends in Low Places," "The Thunder Rolls," and "The Dance," he melded the influences of old-school country, pop, and rock 'n' roll to create a new amalgam that forged the template for modern country for decades to come.

All the way through to 1997's Sevens, Brooks was an unstoppable force, taking country music to a new level in album sales, hit songs, and concert tours along the way. When he went into retirement following that album, millions of fans mourned his absence. Apart from a few stray songs and a handful of benefit performances, Brooks was out of the limelight until 2014. He came roaring back to prominence with a new album — Man Against Machine — and his biggest tour ever, bringing his combination of passion, poetry, and pure fun back to the world at large again.