Chris Gaines sounds like an emo Deviantart OC with a very tragic backstory, I'm surprised he's not some sort of angel with eyes that change depending on his mood
Every time someone is both the host and musical guest on SNL I always want them to introduce themselves while sitting in the audience and then sprint on stage in a panic while their band starts playing
when you mentioned "was this as his career was starting to fade into irrelevance or is this at the height of his fame?" I laughed a little. just for background, he never really faded into irrelevance. he's STILL wildly successful. He regularly sells out stadiums and still makes new music. Friends in Low Places is in the top 5 on several country music charts, and is even #1 on a few.
Yeah I saw him in concert a few years back! It was actually pretty cool. He's a good singer. Honestly, regardless of whether he was actually trying to be two different people or it was a movie, I think it was just some weird thing he did. Like, most super famous people (thinking of Doja Cat being a cat at that Met Gala and Lil Nas X just going almost naked lol) do something really outlandish and weird. Of course it is super strange, but so is Lady Gaga wearing that meat dress, and the whole thing with Jojo Siwa now. I think he was just doing some weird thing.
@@user-gl6xu1wy7gwell danny did it for fun, it was a joke ? unlike chris gaines, he actually put out an explanation: his youtube video. its just what danny does ?
Garth Brooks recently released an album exclusive to Bass Pro shops. So congratulations to him for continuing to have the weirdest instincts on the planet.
He also has almost no streaming numbers at all, because he exclusively licensed all his music to Amazon music. And zero humans ever subscribed to Amazon music…#sad
Chris Gaines failed as a rock artist, but at the encouragement of his late father, Gaines became Garth Brooks, the country singer. As Garth Brooks, his career skyrocketed, but Chris's passion as a rockster still burns inside, believing that he can make it work as his true self and not having to hide behind the Garth Brooks facade anymore. However, the country star power was proven unstoppable. Chris maintained the monster he created, but deep down, he will always be Chris Gaines.
My favorite fact about garth brooks is his recipe for the breakfast bowl he eats every day which consists of 2 tablespoons butter, 8 large eggs, one 16-ounce bag frozen hash browns, such as Tater Tots, thawed, 1 pound pork sausage, 1 pound bacon, *One 9-ounce package cheese and roasted garlic tortellini*, and 10 ounces sharp Cheddar, grated.
one of my favorite SNL sketches ever was when Garth Brooks was the musical guest and Tracy Morgan pulled him aside and just trashed Chris Gaines. Said he was horrible and even got Garth to agree. After Garth exited the scene Lorne Michaels comes up to Tracy and said "You do know Garth IS Chris, right?" and Tracy said "I know. Somebody gotta tell him"
the thing is nobody didn't know it wasn't him. and he didn't try to hide it. im pretty sure his PR team tried to market it as such and Garth is just too gullible and good natured to rebel. his Gaines' backstory was just the movie plot stuff for sure. they probably aimed for some grassroots/ guerilla marketing campaign and got cold feet partway through
Danny, Garth wasn't trying to hide his identity or pretend it wasn't him. He just wanted to try something different (and weird) because he got bored of being so famous and rich as Garth, that he wanted to try something else. Still weird af, but he wasnt trying to hide the fact that it was him
its crazy how Danny doesnt understand Garth Brooks was trolling people and it was not as serious as it seems, its satire of rock stars, its alter ego, its art projects, etc He thinks people in the 90s didnt know about any of that
@user-gl6xu1wy7g well, he wasnt trying to troll anyone. He just wanted to try something different. He wasnt trying to hide the fact that its him either. Garth is just a weird dude, and because he's so inconceivably rich, he got bored being himself. So he tried "Chris Gaines" and in doing that, he weirded everyone out
@@RobwithoneB i can easily imagine Garth and his wife and friends laughing and having fun while doing this project, i doubt he was as emo as he seemed, this was the peak time of prank phone calls and Dennis Rodman wearing dresses, being subversive, like Michael Jackson trolling music executives, tricking parapazzis, Spinal Tap, Waynes World, etc, MarylinManson rumors, the concept of a brooding rockstar was well established into comedy by that point. His BehindTheMusic episode is an obvious spoof and meant to be (subtextually/conceptually) funny, is what i always got from him at the time.. But yes the haters didnt understand, this was also a time where TV shows would get cancelled just for someone changing their hairstyle, people writing letters, etc
This and the album was released as a test to see if people would like the movie and it would work it was a combination of things but garth certainly had fun doing this and trolling people
@user-gl6xu1wy7g "The haters didn't understand"? He intentionally hid that he was part of the project at first, the first releases of the albums didn't have his name, how were people supposed to recognize it as a joke when it seemed he was seriously trying to branch out as someone else?
it's intentionally hilarious, why does no one understand this, this is called Trolling, this is called Viral Marketing, even if it was in the 90s, this was the point
I was in college when this happened, and I never got the impression he was serious about "hiding" that Gaines was really Garth Brooks. It was very much done with a wink. Also, it's really hard to communicate just how huge Garth Brooks was at the time. He was unquestionably the biggest musician in the nation, and, almost single-handedly, brought country music back into the main stream. It also bears mentioning that this was the era of Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, all these really edgy musicians. Garth brooks had this really wholesome image, and I think, playing this character who has a way to escape from his own image without actually abandoning an insanely successful career entirely.
Danny, I am 43 and my daughter and I watch you together.😊 As a teenager during this time in Garth's life, I can tell you that Garth is trying so hard to rewrite history. At the time, Garth LIVED as Chris Gaines. Nobody ever mentioned "a movie" back then. He wore that wig full time and refused to answer to "Garth." It was confusing because Garth was "method acting" but acting like THE PUBLIC was crazy. The fact that they've rewritten history and lied about this fake movie and "the public wasn't ready..." 😂 We weren't ready to accept Garth selling us Chris Gaines was a real person. That wig must've squeezed his brain too tight! Great video, Danny, my daughter and I love your content! 🎉
Yeah, I’m 54, and it was never a secret. It was a huge thing, just weird. I thought that “Chris Gaines” was fully integrated into pop culture references as a weird and unsuccessful dual persona thing, but apparently it’s been so long it went out of circulation. Also I think the sex addiction thing in the biography is a swipe at David Duchovny.
This makes me laugh so much, because my first ever character was an edgelord rogue who licked his rusty, bloodstained dagger because he enjoyed it and by the time I got to play him, I retooled him into a good boy monk. Granted, there was still tragedy. Raised in orphanage, burns down
@@shaeVettori tbh my first character was a Goliath Rogue because I didn't know wtf I was doing and nobody stopped me 💀 she absolutely had a tragic backstory though.
OMG same thought! I was like "the ol' Schindler's wedding photographer eh?"
2 месяца назад
Honestly I feel like there’s so many artists that would like to change their style, but they can’t because that’s not what people would expect from them.
Reminds me of how Julian Casablancas from The Strokes created The Voidz to make more experimental music that he wanted to try. They definitely sound different.
Holy shit! I was around when this happened and watching young people discover this is amazing. I'm 30 seconds into the video and I can't wait to watch this.
Honestly I was living that Garth Brooks and Chris Gains double aesthetic as a teen because of my love of being dramatically emo conflicting with my Christian parents. Chris Gains at school, Garth Brooks at church.
I was in highschool at the time. He was extremely popular back then, he wasn't losing traction at all, he just got bored and wanted to be a rock star for a change. We all knew immediately, and roasted him to no end.
Has anyone considered the unreleased movie might have been a comedy? Chris Gain's life is so outrageously tragic. It's like someone is taking the piss of the tortured artist trope
Hannah Montana literally has an album called “Meet Miley Cyrus” and I can’t tell if Danny was making a joke bc he knew this or if he just happened to pick a bad example 😅
I just gotta say as someone who grew up around this - while it may have been goofy af, a huge part of the reason it wasn’t well received was because of how emotional, timid & feminine Gaines was. Garth made the mistake of building a fan base that despised the kind of man he portrayed with Gaines.
It's too bad he couldn't go at it anonymously and build a different fan base with Chris. I wonder how long they might've been able to keep it a secret...
The other thing is that Garth was known as a very "clean" artist, you know, safe for a hardcore Christian fanbase during the moral panic of the 90s (around the time the parental advisory labels got popularized), and that's where much of his popularity was. So him going on about sex and such was really kind of shocking at the time.
no one who has been a teen within the past several decades is surprised that garth brooks came up with an edgy emo OC with an unnecessarily elaborate backstory, bless his heart
The story is much better than that. Chris Gaines has an elaborate backstory because he was the main character in a movie that was going to star Garth Brookes playing Chris Gaines. The album was released as sort of a promotional album for the movie. The album did so bad that the movie was cancelled.
@@bleedthebeat1 The movie got scrapped before the album was released. Garth had already written the album for the movie so he decided to release it as the character. It didn't go over well.
My theory is Chris Gaines is his real identity and he was the original singer for the Goo Goo Dolls. After being kicked out for being TOO moody he changes to Garth and plans his life long revenge plot to take over the music industry and destroy John Rzeznik.
Garth Brooks lived in my town growing up. He once saw a family struggling to get home in bad weather and bought them a car. He's a really nice guy. Very charitable.
@hedgehog3180 There wasn't any publicity around when he did it. The family told our local news. He did things like this for tons of people, and when anyone went to his gate (the whole town knew where he lived), he would come out to take pictures and sign autographs. Just a very genuine dude.
@@hedgehog3180 he has wealth and was doing something out of the goodness of his heart- the fact that he did something life changing for someone that cost money isn’t a bad thing in any way
As an old…he really was hiding who he was. The single came out and Garths name or a project was never mentioned. Someone outed him, and people were laughing about it, and that’s when PR stepped in and the albums label was changed to put Garths name on the cover. He wanted us to believe Chris was real, the album was supposed to be ground breaking, and then he’d surprise us all that Chris was Garth all along. But it didn’t happen that way. I wasn’t a country music fan, but he was say about 1/2 Taylor Swift popularity. In fact he’d be second I think in popularity as of now. But I understand he was put in a box and wanted to try something super different but fans would of just left if he said “I wanna go Emo”. But I think the overdone character just made people say wtf no matter what music we all liked. But his career still recovered and then he retired pretty early still hugely popular.
I was a fan and remember when that album came out as part of a movie that never happened. Google is your friend. From Wikipedia: “Chris Gaines is a one-off fictional rock persona created as a movie character for Garth Brooks to explore musical styles far removed from his success as a country singer. Initially, Brooks planned to feature the Gaines persona in The Lamb, a motion picture that never materialized. In 1999, Brooks released Garth Brooks in...the Life of Chris Gaines, his only album as Gaines. The album produced two charting Billboard singles, including the top 5 pop hit "Lost in You".”
This. I was alive then and he never attached his name to Gaines until much later when it became apparent it wasnt working out. His name was NOT on the first batches of CDs and stuff at Wal Mart and Chris was being 100% pushed as a real dude that was not related to Garth Brooks. It is just like the OP said, his name was not stuck on the records until later when he was outed and all the older CDs got pulled and replaced.
@@MomeGnome Sorry it was a long time ago. I said I wasn’t a country music fan but he was huge. I think others would have a problem with your comparison when many here don’t know who he is because they were too young. You can see I’m making a guesstimate. But I thought that slot went to Michael Jackson. There’s too many variables and lists and they’d probably juggle around the same 4 names. But as I said, he was HUGE. And that’s all I have to say about that. - Forrest Gump
So I've done a lot of research into the Chris Gaines phenomenon and... I just want to clear up a few confusing tidbits. First off, the album was originally released as "Chris Gaines Greatest Hits". His backstory includes being in the band "Crush" (he and his bandmate wanted to be the new Lennon and McCartney) and then going on to do some solo projects. Another important tidbit is that while he was doing this stunt in 1999, Garth Brooks and his then wife were separated, with his divorce happening a few years later in 2001. With that context in mind, his VH1 Behind the Life documentary is a WILD ride. The amount of time spent discussing his sex addiction is insane and plays out like what a middle schooler thinks sex addiction would be. Pair that with the fact that he was separating from his wife and it looks like he's severely overcompensating with a character that HE CREATED by making Chris Gaines a rocker sex god. For more context, I made a helpful video analysis: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rC-VjV8cDDw.html
THANK YOU. I was certain I remembered that the Garth Brooks name wasn't originally on the album cover, and that's why it was such a big joke how quickly people figured it out, but I was seriously starting to think I'd been Mandella Effected.
To be honest, male country stars have a hard time transitioning into completely different genres without serious scrutiny from insecure male listeners, so I'm sure that had something to do with it
Men drive commercial trucks, they drink whiskey and beer everyday, and they listen to country. If you refuse to do these manly things you're not a man. There's absolutely nothing insecure about that.
13:15 When Danny is reading Chris Gains’ backstory my first thought was this is someone’s first DnD edge lord, emo character that they just gave THE MOST tragic backstory they could possibly think of. Like anyone else agree?
It's absolutely the kind of tragic backstory that an OC would have or you'd see on like AO3. Like just an insane series of tragedies one after the other where everyone keeps dying but also nothing that could ever add like real moral baggage to the story nor have like wider implications since it is just there to make the character cool and edgy.
11:21 it doesn't even sound like rock the instromentals are so light and he's like whispering the lyrics I am now convinced he doesn't even know what rock music is or sounds like
From the moment I saw the thumbnail and even after the video was over, can't unsee Gaines as Adam Gontier with a soul patch. It's even more accurate for his younger self
the way they wrote Gaines' backstory is exactly how catfishers lie - then my mom got cancer, then my brother went to jail, then I got diagnosed with a rare condition no one else has ever had before..........
This is legit so interesting and strange lol like this is actually a fascinating story. I love watching videos like this about stuff from years ago I’ve never heard about lol it’s really actually intriguing.
It actually makes perfect sense for a superstar to want to experience just being a musician again, without influencing or being influenced by their main brand. Many famous artists have done some variation of this, though maybe not quite as comedically.
Which is why it's confusing he didn't do it the same way as those artists because this isn't new it's been done before. Authors have done it too. Usually in both cases they get miffed that they are as successful as their normal identity so it gets "leaked" and then they become successful but they don't go through all this weirdness.
@bunny-dl2fimy brother in Christ I was saying it because it was a funny haha I don't know why this comment triggered you so badly LMAO I wish I could laugh react to it 😂
I think more artists should do this. I have always loved those music videos where the singer plays multiple characters, like in Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend," or Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" (which are kind of the same song now that I think about it). It would be like that. I would _love_ if Taylor Swift's altsona, Andromeda Twist, came out with her authentic 2007 pop-punk album, "Bleed With Me." The cover title is a pop punk version of "You Belong With Me." "She wears short skirts, I wear converse. She's cheer captain and I'm not cheer captain." She basically dresses and acts like Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. I can't wait. Your move, Taylor.
5:43 - Hannah Montana DID release an album similar to this! It was called "Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus". One disc was Hannah and the other disc was Miley. They were the basis for her debut tour, literally called the 'Best of Both Worlds' tour! Source: 7-10 year old me who played that album until the CDs no longer worked
Timing is insane, I was JUST talking about the whole Chris Gaines thing with my brother over the weekend, so I already knew about it. I feel like he even appeared on SNL as Chris Gaines... which maybe you talk about, but I haven't actually finished the video yet. So yeah tbf, I have never actually done any investigating about Chris Gaines. I just remember being a kid and seeing it and thinking it looked like a stupid thing to do, so this video is actually just what I needed to get caught up on the backstory of Chris Gaines.
7:55 the reason none of his other songs ever hit billboard charts is because they didn’t play on pop radio stations. They were super popular, just not eligible for that specifically.
a few months ago I was at a writing camp where we learned about Chris Gaines and then did an activity where we took genres we didn’t write about and made up a persona who did write those book genres. The counselor said we were “Chris Gaines-ing ourselves”
How have I never noticed how pretty Danny’s eyes are? They look like the turquoise water in the Caribbean. (I’m faded rn and I spent the whole video trying to determine if they were edited or not)
when the alter ego started singing on SNL, i literally made the exact same expression that danny then cuts to a second later and when i saw it, i started laughing so hard 😭
I was 27 when this happened, I was never a Garth Brooks fan but everybody knew who he was. I never heard anything about a movie, and remember him being completely serious about this alter ego. Only after it started getting out that CG was GB did any "cheeky-ness" start.
As a designated Old Person, I can confirm that back in the day when the internet wasn't as omnipresent the whole "Chris Gaines" thing did confuse and fool some people, but generally people knew it was some kind of Garth Brooks alter-ego thing for a movie once it got into the major news outlets and the newscasters were very wink-wink about it. "We're going to interview Chris Gaines, who we hear is a big fan of Garth Brooks!" I think he may have tried to see if he could legitimately trick people at first, but most people figured it out fairly quick by 1999 standards and his fans were like, "...the hell is this?" When they listened to the album. It was definitely pretty widely known by the time he was on SNL.
This is one of my biggest music hyperfixations, I have four copies of his album, one is holographic. I also have some weird Garth brooks merch in general (promotional not for sale stuff and pins) and the things I find most interesting about this whole thing is the insane fake lore about the fake band that he fake left and how he shot the pictures to make him look skinny and it didn’t bode well for his live concerts when he was gaining weight
