 You guys may remember a few years ago when I tried to make a viral TikTok song, so I made up a fake musical artist. I disguised myself so that people wouldn't know it was me and I released a song under a pseudo-nim Fox season. But despite me disguising myself to the best of my abilities, it did not work. Everyone knew it was me right away and I was humiliated. Well, did you know that that entire thing has actually happened before? But instead of with me, it was with one of the biggest musical artists of all time? Well, I also did not know. Apparently in 1999, Garth Brooks, one of the most famous men in the world at the time, created an alter ego named Chris Gaines. Sex. That's the greatest thing about being a musician. He started releasing music under this name. Why did he do that? Well, we're gonna get to the bottom of that today. See, I'm actually not super familiar with this story. I'm gonna be learning about it at the same time as you. I've had a special team of content curators, which consists of one guy. His name is Robert. Put together all of the necessary materials for us to figure out what exactly happened back in 1999. Okay, first off, who is Garth Brooks? I gotta admit, I am not super well versed on Garth Brooks. 1999 is when I was five years old. I wasn't listening to a ton of country music back then. But according to this bio on his website, he remains the number one selling solo artist in US history, certified by the RIAA with 157 million album sales. Brooks is the first and only artist in history to receive nine diamond awards for the now nine albums certified at over 10 million. So when I say this guy was popular, this dude was like the guy. He was that guy in the 1990s. Now, let me see what his like most popular song was. Okay, so the dance, Friends in Low Place. Okay, I definitely know that song. That's his famous song about friends being trapped in a well. Also, Garth Brooks' website is insane, dude. I'm trying to read his bio and there's like a laser light show going on in the background. What is this? Makes it so hard to read. I started getting dizzy when I opened this website. Garth Brooks, you got to hire a new web designer. Maybe he doesn't want people to read his bio because he's embarrassed about the whole Chris Gaines thing. Okay, then Robert says, then in 1999 at the height of his stardom, Garth Brooks took one of the weirdest swings a pop star has ever taken. Who is Chris Gaines? Barth, Barth, Barth Brooks. Garth Brooks' alter ego explained. And there's a picture of him. Yeah, so a big part of this apparently is his disguise. So hold on, let me show you what Garth Brooks actually looks like. This is Barth Brooks and this is Chris Gaines. Very clearly a country singer, very clearly not. Is he wearing colored contacts too? Okay, maybe we'll learn more about the disguise later, but let's get into the article. Many artists, regardless of their respective mediums, do sometimes decide to attempt a change of pace when it comes to the art they put out there in the world. Photographers might decide to switch things up by going from black and white imagery to vibrant color for once. That's funny to use a photographer as an example, cause like imagine you hired a wedding photographer and they show up and insist on like shooting your wedding photos in a different style than what you agreed on. But not only that, they're also in a disguise. They're super emo looking with their hair over one eye and they're like, I was thinking that we could do all of your photos in black and white with just like one pop of color, maybe just like only red. While not many musicians will take on a whole new identity for change of artistic pace, but award winning country music superstar Garth Brooks did. The guitar playing legend once went completely against the grain by taking on a whole alter ego. He changed his hairstyle and outfits and released an album under the name of Chris Gaines. Side note, every time I read the words Chris Gaines, I am gonna accidentally think of Chip Gaines, of Chip and Joanna Gaines, the house renovator from Fixer Upper. Maybe that's him too, dude, we don't know. I've actually never seen Garth Brooks and Chris Gaines and Chip Gaines all in the same room together. Was this like as his career was starting to fade into the relevance or did he, is this like at the height of his fame? It seems like it was at the height of his fame. That makes it so much more insane. I could see like after your prime, you wanting to switch it up and do something else but trying to do both at once, he was still Garth Brooks. I wonder if they ever collabed. In 1999, Garth Brooks and his production company, Red Stroke Entertainment began to develop a film project that was meant to be a dramatic portrayal of a popular rock and roll musician named Chris Gaines. It was given the title The Lamb but not much else detail at that point. Gaines was Australian, had dark hair and even a soul patch, but not quite the features Brooks fans were used to at all. The detail about Gaines was created by Brooks himself apart from the songs which were written by several other songwriters, including country music superstar Trisha Yearwood. Oh, who would later become Brooks' wife? Oh, that's a weird turn of events, okay. Guess he liked the songs that she wrote a lot. I liked that you ghost wrote those songs for me. How would you like to ghost write my vows for me? Will you marry me? And I'm serious about the vows thing. I don't want to write my own vows if that's cool. Wait, so this started as a movie role? He was making a movie and created a character named Chris Gaines. And then at some point he just becomes the character. Is this gonna be like Austin Butler? How he just became Elvis after Elvis? To build hype for the upcoming movie, Brooks embodied the role of the fictional rock icon by releasing an album Garth Brooks in The Life of Chris Gaines in October of that year. The album was tied into the planned film that at the time had no projected release date. Okay, so is he trying to trick people or not? It kind of seems like he's not from this article. I mean, his name is in the album title. If he was trying to fool people, he would be doing a really bad job. It'd be like Hannah Montana releasing an album called I'm Miley Cyrus, The Public's Reception of Gaines. Oh, and we've got a song here. Chris Gaines, Lost in You. I've got friends in low places. The song's just the same. It is very moody looking now. You are my God, sir. It's definitely an interesting look he's got going on. Has he ever seen a rock star before? He looks like a cult leader or something. Why isn't he wearing shoes? Cult leaders don't wear shoes. That's in case you didn't get that reference. The masses weren't ready and ultimately didn't accept Gaines. Sure, Brooks fans gave his new style a try as the album actually went number two on the Billboard 200s charts. However, the people who purchased the album were quickly disappointed and genuinely confused. I don't know what's so confusing about it. It's Garth Brooks in Chris Gaines. Wait, is that what the album was called? In The Life of Chris Gaines. It was rumored that even his most loyal fans simply didn't catch on to the fictional aspects of Gaines. Instead, they easily thought that Brooks was genuinely going off the deep and changing his whole life around. People didn't understand the connection with the movie. They just thought he was changing his name, his hairstyle, taking off his shoes and just completely changing his music style. As for the lamb, Brooks Production Company focused more on the marketing and promotion of the music, forcing any basic foundations or even just the movie's production to fall by the wayside. By early 2001, anything involving a potential movie seemingly stopped and the life of Chris Gaines quickly went from destined to disappearing. So they never released the movie. Well, yeah, that's gonna make it way more confusing. I could definitely understand people thinking that you went insane, actually. Garth, is that his real name Garth? Is that a name? Just sort of realized I've never heard that name before. Is he an alter ego? What is behind the name Garth? Makes it sound like it's some kind of evil plot. Who's behind this name? We have to get to the bottom of it and we have to stop them. A Garth is an enclosed quadrangle or yard, especially one surrounded by a cloister. What the fuck is going on? What am I reading? I think I clicked the wrong article. Oh, it is possible that the name Garth comes from Garth. Okay, that's what I was looking for. Thank you for the quadrangle explanation. But it wasn't a total waste. The single lost in you did make it to the Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 charts, which is still Brooks only track in his career to appear on the list. Huh? How is that possible? You just learn he's like the most popular artist of all time. His song even went gold in the year it was released. The album as a whole did reach Platinum status in Canada and double platinum in the United States as well. So it wasn't all bad. It was his most popular song of all time and people actually turned out to like Chris Gaines way better than Garth Brooks. How much do you want to bet the movie wasn't even a real thing that was gonna happen? It kind of seems like maybe he made up the movie as an excuse when people started being like, we know it's you Garth. And he's just like, what? Yeah, guys, I'm just, I'm preparing for a movie where I'm like the coolest guy in the world. I play like the character of the coolest rock star you've ever seen. There's no more. Okay, the vibe I'm getting from this music video is that he was genuinely trying to convince people that this was a real person named Chris Gaines and not Garth Brooks. Because he's hiding his face so much. His hair is covering his eyes. Every shot of him, he's like half in shadow and turning away from the camera or they're adding some strange blur effect to him. I'm really Danny but you'll never tell. It's so funny to release a new artist to the world and like their debut single when you get a chance to like really get to know the artist for the first time to be like, I'm a new artist. I do you guys like my music? Do you like what I look like? They're filming Chris Gaines like he's bigfoot. I'm trying to imagine if this like, if a music video like this came out today from one of the most popular artists pretending to be someone else. Like if Taylor Swift released a music video, she just like looked kind of different and was like trying to cover her face the whole time and be like, I'm not Taylor Swift. How confused would everyone be? That would be so strange. Okay, this is a clip of Garth Brooks promo-ing his episode of Saturday Night Live featuring Chris Gaines as the musical guest. Hey everybody, I'm Garth Brooks and I get to host Saturday Night Live this weekend. My musical guest is gonna be Chris Gaines. Now of course I wanted to play the music but mango wanted Chris. He's even pretending to be offended that they didn't ask him to be the musical guest. I'm feeling a little bit of cheekiness here. I feel like he's playing into it a little bit, the absurdity of it. So I'm not totally convinced that he's actually trying to pretend like Chris Gaines is a real person. Although maybe the cheekiness is just to give himself deniability so that when people find out it's him that he can be like, no, I never, you guys, I was joking the whole time. I thought you knew that. Look how cheeky I was being. Okay, now we have Garth Brooks introducing Chris Gaines as the musical guest on SNL. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Gaines. Wait, how did they do that then? Was this part filmed before and not actually live? That way he could be in costume the entire time. It is kind of a really long intro. Maybe this was live and right after it cuts away from him he has to sprint backstage. During this intro he's like rapidly changing his costume. He's putting on his dark hair. He comes out, he's all fucked up and out of breath. God, guys, I'm Chris Gaines. Okay, here he comes. I gotta say it does not sound great. Undercover boss look. God, I feel like it would be so embarrassing to be Chris Gaines. He must have felt pretty low after this all went down. Do you think Chris Gaines is the friend that Garth was talking about in that song? Friends in no place. The fact that this movie never came out is so crazy because he's like such a character in this. Like he's acting like a stereotype of a broody, brooding rock star. I feel like before the last Borat movie came out Sasha Barrett Cohen was going around in character a lot. Just like doing shenanigans, using like YouTube videos, promotional stuff as Borat. Imagine if Borat just never came out. Everyone's like, okay, I guess that was just for, I guess that wasn't for anything. That was just for him. Okay, now we got another article called Chris Gaines backstory is all kinds of tragic. Chris Gaines may well be the most elaborately documented country star who doesn't actually exist. The tortured rock and roll alter ego of Garth Brooks gained had his heyday in the late 90s with the 1999 release of Garth Brooks in the life of Chris Gaines. A greatest hits project that cold songs from many albums he released on Capitol Records, all of which were fictional. Wait, did he release music as Chris Gaines before this album, before admitting it was Garth Brooks and okay, did I totally misunderstand that? I gotta look up Chris Gaines discography now. I go to Chris Gaines Wikipedia page and it's like Chris Gaines is a type of quadrangle or yard. Okay, so Garth Brooks in the life of Chris Gaines is the only album that Chris Gaines released but the single for that album, Lost in You was released earlier than the album. But it still says Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines even on the single. Again, I can still understand why people would be weirded out with this, having no knowledge of a movie in the works. Definitely does seem like a weird thing to do. When it comes to the Chris Gaines project, it's tough to separate fact from fiction. Don't think it's that hard. I think Garth Brooks is the real one. Chris Gaines is the fake one. Are they suggesting we're not sure? He might've been Chris Gaines the whole time and Garth is the made up one. We still don't know what is behind Garth. As intricately detailed as Gaines musical exploits are, his backstory is just as fleshed out and the details of the singer's life are as tumultuous as they are plentiful. Okay, so they like made up a whole fake backstory for him. For example, his dad died after a prolonged battle with cancer leading Gaines down a path toward a debilitating sex addiction. That's not all. Gaines home was burned to the ground by arsonists and he was betrayed and financially extorted by the manager who helped launch his career whom he also slept with in the throes of his sex addiction. How crazy would it be if like the person perpetrating all of this betrayal and financial extortion was Garth Brooks in this made up backstory? He just accidentally makes himself out to be this huge asshole. The list goes on. Gaines nearly lost his life in a car crash that had severely injured his face, ultimately permanently changing the way he looks. Maybe that's why he's covering his face with his hair all the time and doesn't want to be seen by the camera. And perhaps most centrally to the torment that plagued his career, he lost a good friend and musical partner named Tommy in a horrific plane crash. Has anything bad not happened to Chris Gaines? Like we get it, he makes dark music so it makes sense for him to have a dark past. You don't need to throw everything in there. What was this movie gonna be? Just a series of bad things happening to this guy. Sounds like a miserable movie. If Gaines were a real person and his life had truly taken place, it would be tragic. But as a fictional narrative, it's a testament to how hard Brooks and his collaborators worked on every detail of the Chris Gaines project. Yeah, it seems like they worked really hard, Googling worst things that could happen to you and then just shoving them all in the script. When Brooks first debuted Gaines' work, some fans hailed it as a great rock and roll joke while others were puzzled. Probably the worst reception you could get for a new piece of art you put out into the world. You wake up the morning of your album's release and ask your manager, what are people thinking of it? Are there reviews in? Your manager's like, yeah, well, you know, some people think it's a joke, but other people are confused. So, you know, Pitchfork gave it two question marks. So apparently VH1 made a behind the life of Chris Gaines. Acting like Chris Gaines was a real person where they go through like his tormented life and it's 40 minutes long. Oh my God. I think this is also the worst quality video on YouTube. It's crazy. Chris Gaines solo career took him to the top of the charts then his manager took him to the cleaners. I turned Chris Gaines from a nobody into a superstar. They even interviewed the manager who financially extorted him. That's crazy. I remember going over to Chris's house. He was packing and... Did he have like fake friend interviews, fake manager interviews? He was trying to make Chris Gaines real. He was. It's weird because it's like he's trying to play it off as a character and real at the same time. Part of me feels like if it worked and no one like called him out on it, he was just gonna become Chris Gaines and act like Garth Brooks never happened. Okay, so there's a video of him from 2023 talking about it. So let's see what he has to say in hindsight. And now when people speak of the Gaines project, all they talk about is the music. I like that. Of course you would. No one's talking about the insane thing that I did. Just the music. Just how I like it. Chris Gaines project, if you just left it alone with all the shit it went through, if you just left it alone, the music was eventually gonna start to speak. I like it. It's like also just leave it alone. Leave it alone for a long time. Eventually you'll like it. Everyone stop talking about stuff. Stop making fun of me for a little bit and then the music will speak for itself. The Chris Gaines project was Chris Gaines' greatest hits. Technically those songs had to come from previous albums. Yeah, just five of them. So what are your thoughts on revisiting that? The five albums have to come out. The five albums have to come out. Yo. The five albums have to come out. Okay. Could we finally get a Chris Gaines comeback season? During an extensive Q and A at Billboard Live in conversation, the country star confirmed his intentions to release more music as the controversial character. Well, I for one am very excited and cannot wait for Chris Gaines to come back. And Chris, if you ever wanna collab on a song, I know a really great up-and-coming musical artist named Foxy's in who would love to work with you. All right, well, that's it. I'll see you guys next time. Oh, bye-bye.