30 Mind Blowing Facts Every Fan Should Know About Fan Favorite Garth Brooks

Troyal Garth Brooks, the famous American country singer and songwriter, best known for integrating rock and roll elements into the country genre, was born on February 7, 1962 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S. Here are 30 interesting facts about the artist:

1. Brooks is the first and only artist in the history of music to have received seven career Diamond Award albums with each pointing to over 10 million sales, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
2. With the total album sales reaching over 69,544,000 copies, he became the best-selling album artist in the U.S., even ahead of “The Beatles,” with 65,730,000 album sales, as of May 2014. He is named as the fastest-selling album artist in the history of RIAA.
3. His album “Ropin’ the Wind,” was the first country album to be debuted at #1 on the Billboard pop chart in the history of music.
4. He has won the SoundExchange Digital Radio Award in 2015, for receiving over 1 billion streams of his music on digital services within a period of one year. With this, he became the first country artist in the history of music to win the award.
5. He received the Arkansas Traveler certificate, an honorary title bestowed on notable individuals who serve as a goodwill ambassador for the Arkansas, from the State Senator, Jason Rapert in the year 2014.
6. He started his professional music career as a singer and guitarist in Oklahoma clubs and bars, including the Wild Willie's Saloon in Stillwater.
7. He founded GhostTunes, an online music store in September 2014. The store features his digital music along with more than ten million songs from other artists.
8. His 1997 concert at The Central Park, for promoting his seventh studio album “Sevens,” had over 980,000 fans in attendance, making it the largest concert in the history of The Central Park.
9. He was recently honored with the Entertainer of the Year Award at the CMA Awards, for the fifth time, which is the first time in the history.
10. He has won a total of 12 American Music Awards, out of 20 nominations, two out of thirteen Grammy Awards, seventeen Billboard Music Awards, out of 23 nominations, the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards - "Artist of the 90s" award.
11. His first live album “Double Live,” released in 1998, certified 21× Platinum by the RIAA, is the best-selling live album of all time and ranks seventh in the list of most shipped album in United States.
12. Brooks is one of the first musicians to have signed an exclusive deal of music distribution with a single retailer. He collaborated with Walmart, leasing the rights to his entire catalog.
13. He has been certified as the top-selling solo artist of the 20th century with 138 million albums by the RIAA.
14. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on October 21, 2012 in Nashville, Tennessee. He was inducted to the Grand Ole Opry, the longest-running radio broadcast in US history.
15. Initially Brooks was more into rock music and claimed James Taylor, Dan Fogelberg, and Townes Van Zandt to have been his major influences. However, it was after George Strait’s debut single “Unwound,” that he decided to play country music.
16. He is the first artist in the history of American country music to have sold out venues including the Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre and London's Wembley Arena, for his very first world tour in the year 1993.
17. In December 2010, he raised over $5 million to benefit the May 2010 Nashville flood victims, by playing nine shows in less than a week in Nashville at Bridgestone Arena.
18. On May 24, 1986, he married his college sweetheart Sandy Mahl. The duo has three daughters - Taylor Mayne Pearl, August Anna, and Allie Colleen Brooks. However, the couple’s relationship did not last long, and divorced on December 17, 2001. Later in an interview, Brooks admitted to have cheated on his then-wife, while he was on world tours.
19. Following his split with the Capitol Records, Brooks established Pearl Records, his own record label in the year 2005. Till date, he has released four compilation albums and his 2014 studio album, through Pearl Records.
20. In the year 1999, he founded the Teammates for Kids Foundation, which functions with the motto to financially aid various charities for children. The foundation donated over $1 million to help build homes in Thailand following Asian Tsunami. He has also been a fundraiser for various other charities including famine relief.
21. He was honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 1750 Vine Street in Hollywood, California on June 30, 1995.
22. “The Dance,” from his first album, which reached #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, remains to be his favorite, out of the all the songs he recorded in his entire career.
23. His energetic style of stage persona, in which he performs arena rock theatrics in an effort to spice up the normally staid country music, is said to have been directly inspired by Chris LeDoux, an American country music singer-songwriter.
24. He launched Touch 'em All Foundation with Major League Baseball in the year 1998, and even began a short career in baseball, where he signed up for spring training in 1998 and 1999, with the San Diego Padres. In 2004, he signed with the Kansas City Royals, and got his first and only hit off Mike Myers during his final spring training game.
25. He performed the Garth Brooks: Live in LA benefit concerts – five concerts at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California on January 25 and 26, 2008, in an effort to raise money for Fire Intervention Relief Effort, serving those impacted by the 2007 California wildfires. All the five concerts were sold out within 58 minutes, though each ticket was prices at $40. CBS broadcasted the first concert live, for additional fundraising.
26. His second world tour that grossed a total of more than $105 million, has been ranked among the highest-grossing concert tours in the 1990s, while the total attendance of around 5.5 million made it the third largest in the all-time list of concert attendance.
27. He is the first country artist to have three albums listed in the Billboard 200’s top 20 in the same week.
28. He planned to perform a show in Kansas City, in November 2007, but had to expand the performance to nine shows, due to incredibly high demand. All the nine shows, which sums up to about 140,000 tickets, sold out in less than two hours. The final concert is said to have simulcast to over 300 movie theaters across the United States.
29. He married his close friend from the 1990s Trisha Yearwood, an American country music singer and an author, on December 10, 2005 in a private ceremony at the couple's home in Owasso, Oklahoma. The couple had been dating, since Brooks’s first wife Sandy Mahl filed for divorce. After four years of dating, he proposed to her on May 25, 2005, in front of 7,000 fans in Bakersfield, California, and she accepted his proposal without any hesitation.
30. He has won a total of 23 Academy of Country Music Awards, including the "Artist of the Decade," "40th Anniversary Milestone Award," "Crystal Milestone Award," "Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award," and "Milestone Award." He has received a total of 49 nominations till date.
31. Garth Brooks net worth: $240 Million