Start date March 12, 1996 No. of shows 220 worldwide Box office 105 million USD Associated albums Fresh Horses, Sevens | Legs 5 End date November 22, 1998 Leg 5 | |
Location Europe, North America, South America | ||
The Garth Brooks World Tour(1996–98) was a concert tour by American country pop artist Garth Brooks. Launching in support of Brooks' albums, Fresh Horses, and later Sevens, the tour followed Brooks' 1993–94 tour and also featured appearances by Trisha Yearwood. Even though this was Brooks' final concert tour before his retirement in 2001, it drew record-breaking crowds in North America, 2 places in Ireland, and one place in South America, becoming the third-most attended concert tour of all time, as well as one of the decade's highest-grossing concert tours.
Contents
Background and content
After his first successful world tour, Brooks embarked on his second, covering many cities at random throughout the United States and Canada, with appearances in Ireland and Brazil. Initially launching to support Brooks' 1995 album, Fresh Horses, it also began to feature songs from Sevens, released in 1997. The concerts' outline evolved as the set lists changed throughout the tour. Each show began with smoke-filled entrance by Brooks, appearing via hydraulic lift through a piano as the opening notes of "The Old Stuff" were played. Wearing a wireless microphone headset, Brooks proceeded to dance about the stage, performing a series of old and new songs. The high energy and pyrotechnics garnered comparison to hard rock performances by bands including Kiss, while still achieving a country atmosphere. Following the release of Brooks' album, Sevens, Trisha Yearwood began making periodic appearances to perform duets, such as "In Another's Eyes".
Ticket sales and revenue
Brooks' 1996–98 world tour continued the tradition established by his first tour, selling each ticket for the same price ($20), regardless of location in the venue. Because of this, demand was extremely high breaking many records worldwide, including arena ticket sales and attendance records. Concerts began selling out in minutes, resulting in such high demand that multiple shows were added for many cities. Many of these ticket sales and attendance records were broken by Brooks once again on his 2014 tour.
Despite each ticket costing well below the average ticket prices at the time, the tour managed to gross nearly $105 million worldwide, and is listed among the highest-grossing concert tours in the 1990s. Its total attendance, approximately 5.5 million, ranks fourth all-time (behind U2, Pink Floyd, and The Rolling Stones).
Audio
Portions of various concerts from the tour were recorded and released as a live album to coincide with the tour's conclusion. The two-disc release, called Double Live, went on to become the best-selling live album of all time, certified 21× platinum by the RIAA, and is the seventh-most shipped album in United States music history.
Video
The tour's concerts in New York City's Central Park and Dublin's Croke Park were filmed for later broadcasting. Garth: Live from Central Park was a free concert attended by 980,000 fans, the most-attended concert in the park's history. Paying homage to Woodstock, the concert was dubbed "Garthstock", featuring appearances by Billy Joel and Don McLean. It was broadcast on HBO, receiving nearly 15 million live viewers, the most of any concert special that year, and it received six Emmy Award nominations. Garth Brooks: Live from Dublin, footage of the May 16, 1997 concert, was filmed and later broadcast on NBC, receiving 15.7 million viewers. Both specials were included in Brooks' The Entertainer DVD collection, released in 2006.
Set list
This set list is representative of the May 20, 1998 performance in Louisville, Kentucky. It does not represent all concerts for the duration of the series.