Garth Brooks – People Loving People
Jukebox Loving Garth
[Video][Website]
[2.85]
Iain Mew: Saying that the world’s non-specific problems can be fixed by non-specific people loving non-specific people: harmless hippy nonsense. Saying that the solution is people loving people, while also mentioning colours and cultures: a little uncomfortable. Saying that the solution is people loving people, and identifying the problem to be solved as “the colours and the cultures circle round us on a spindle”: hold it. Who is the stationary “us” there, that doesn’t count as part of the “complicated riddle”? White people? Wind back from there to “We fear what we don’t understand/We’ve been scared since time began”, a moment humming with crafted anguish, and the effect is poisonous. He’s pardoning prejudice as natural and monolithic, without offering anything tangible in how to overcome or even acknowledge specific prejudice. People loving people can’t even fix a failure to get proper permission for your concerts, and you think it’s going to fix institutionalised racism?
[1]
Crystal Leww: Okay, but “people loving people” is not going to pay for this kid’s braces.
[1]
Micha Cavaseno: Two things have prepared me for this single in the general consciousness of the realm of life: 1) At the beginning of 2013, when DJ Mustard’s “Ketchup” mixtape spurted out it’s various gems, a guest rapper from Washington named Royce The Choice offered the dazzling punchline “I’m never off; Garth Brooks’ Hat.” 2) At a certain point this summer, I sat in my mother’s living room as we both feigned interest in Brooks’ Las Vegas concert on TV, while he attempted to engage and showboat to the ‘intimate’ crowd, displaying an eternally “ON” persona not unlike his hat. It reminds me that when Brooks-Mania hit my more suburban friends’ families (who really had no business listening to Garth Brooks in Long Island), it always felt boisterous and flash. Yet apparently if you dig into the Brooks discography, you do find a much more sensitive, earnest type of guy, and that’s the guy who showed up for his comeback single. The production feels a bit too much on the U2 vibe which only strengthens the preachiness, and Brooks’ yelp is inept. But I feel for the guy. Maybe the guy needs to be less subdued.
[4]
Anthony Easton: No one goes to Garth Brooks for moral complexity, and he has been out of the game for so long that cultural memory might suggest that he is better than he is, and he will sell all rhe tickets, and the residency in Vegas went well enough without a lead single, or a new project, and so he doesn’t need to make new music to be a nostalgia act, not like Elvis ca the American Trilogy–and besides the American Trilogy rid that line between prophetic schmaltz and overblown nonsense–and if there was any reason to truly love Garth, it was that he was the closest to that ideal. Plus, this doesn’t even mention Jesus. I’m disappointed.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The guitars chug and glisten with confidence and charm, and Brooks’ weathered voice hangs on to the sentiments like he means it, but while these sentiments aren’t phony they ain’t anything special either. Ominously, he doesn’t even sound as if he’s reaching to Miranda Lambert or Kelly Musgraves fans — who’s the “us” to whom he turns for stability? Vagueness loving vagueness, with cultural anxiety thrown in. And Brooks at his most ecumenical didn’t recognize such a thing.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: The world sure has felt bleak in 2014, but perk up, everybody — Garth Brooks spent the past decade figuring out how to solve all our ills! And guess what, “it’s a complicated riddle/the solution is so simple.” So simple he probably read it on a coffee mug: “it’s just people loving people.” Brooks turns this pre-K philosophy into a big soaring stadium number because that must make it true. Look, I don’t expect a Garth Brooks song to offer up reasonable insights into anything in 2014. But this is the most cynical, egotistical song I’ve heard all year.
[0]
Thomas Inskeep: Whaaaaaat? I’m a major Garth fan, was super-excited for the first new original Garth material since 2007, and we get this watery re-tread of “We Shall Be Free” with 1998 adult contemporary production? Sure, he’s always had a soft-rock bent to him, but Garth’s records have never sounded as, frankly, un-country as this. And the song itself isn’t even starchy enough to be called a wet noodle.
[4]
Megan Harrington: The hot take going into the weekend is how narcissistic and oblivious U2 are for foisting their new album on an unwilling and disinterested audience. But I have to believe even Bono isn’t so far removed from reality that he’d pen a lyric like “people loving people/ that’s the enemy of everything that’s evil.” That’s rhetoric for a Coca Cola commercial, not a palatable solution from an adult man. I don’t think “love” is even the sentiment he’s looking for (that’d be empathy, though I understand exploring the subtleties of human interaction is not what Brooks is here to do) and to match this over-simplification to the most retro roaring early 90s production just makes Brooks the year’s most hopelessly out of touch comeback attempt.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: How I parse what Garth’s singing: “people [not me] loving people [not you].” It’d help if the music felt remotely as if care was expended.
[3]
Brad Shoup: It’s as if the wait was broken by the impulse to out-Paisley Paisley. And that impulse involves more reverbed guitar and less specificity. His voice always piggybacked onto the material, but now it’s pulling off the bone, straining with the fury of the helpless (or the impotent, if you’re uncharitable). Love the reference to Aristotle — he’s always chafed at country’s strictures, and the results have usually been entertaining, not bathetic.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: Garth Brooks once interpolated the old chestnut “Get Together” chorus on a single from his bewildering Chris Gaines project. Damned if I can hear a difference using his own name and his own words, other than that it’s even more corny and washy. Look, Garth, I don’t care if your next pro-peace statement involves being airdropped near the Russia/Ukraine border or founding Hands Across The Disputed Territories or acting as a human shield somewhere, as long as you don’t ever do anything like this again, please.
[2]
Jonathan Bradley: I have a fondness for studied evocations of modest Americana, and Brooks’s ode to the power of community is definitely that. For a star of his vintage, however, this rendition is as threadbare as a cynic might expect. The guitars twinkle like a thousand points of light; the Just Say No fixation of the hook is as dated as that reference.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: If only there were a US Eurovision knockoff, this would have a place. It’s so guileless it’s almost “CHILDREN. CHILDREN. FUTURE. FUTURE.” The chorus is easily one of the clumsiest this site has covered this year, as if The Script lost the ability to rhyme, and the earnest cheer about the sheer competence of the music is just gauche. About as revolutionary as a square wheel; barely conscious, without a pulse.
[4]
Thanks for the laffs, guys. I’m going to remember Thomas’ wet noodle zing.