Consider Garth Brooks

You probably didn’t wake up today thinking, “Gee, I’d love to read an assessment of Garth Brooks’ career,” but that’s why life, despite all its horror and banality, still manages to surprise: “Garth Brooks is not cool. He appealed to old people and little kids, he recorded Bob Dylan songs only when Billy Joel did them first, and he knowingly walked around in public in loud, multi-colored shirts tucked inside tight black Wranglers. But guys like that sell records. And Garth Brooks was that guy at the exact moment when nobody else wanted to be that guy. The ’90s music that we’re devoting so much energy to commemorating right now — whether it’s grunge, gangsta rap, rave, or indie-rock — rose up from underground scenes and rubbed shoulders uncomfortably with mainstream tastes. We romanticize that tension, because those artists were romantic and tense, and aging nostalgists associate those qualities with their own childhoods. Garth Brooks, meanwhile, was a compendium of popular music from the ’70s and ’80s, and his accomplishment was showing how potent old formulas could still be.” [Via]