If we’re being coy, adorable little stinkers, we’ll point out that Garth Brooks has said a lot of things. The country superstar has been alive for 61 years, and he’s been speaking for most of it.
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But when it comes to ground-shaking, world-shifting, dynamic-testing, potentially career-changing sound bites, nothing holds a candle to Brooks’ recent round of discussion points. More than a simple political opinion or statement of conviction, this ever-spinning dynamo of yeehaw success made waves that cannot be unmade in June of 2023, when he doubled down on his previous announcement that his bar would sell beer.
Garth Brooks enjoys the kind of fame where he can pick up just as much publicity for things that he didn’t say as he can for things that he did. For receipts, check the recent virality of a Jan. 6, 2024 post on The Dunning-Kruger Times, a satire website with the political subtlety of a mid-2000s Stephen Colbert. They (mis-)quoted Brooks as saying that he intended to quit country music, and that he “didn’t fit in anymore.” Snopes — as well as a healthy amount of skepticism regarding the journalistic scruples of a writer named “Flagg Eagleton – Patriot” — will tell you otherwise: Brooks never said any such thing. That didn’t prevent the faux-news outlet’s Facebook post from garnering thousands of reactions, though.
And if someone can pick up social media backlash over an off-brand Onion article, imagine what would happen if they actually said something out loud. For a better understanding of what is, without context, a group of strangers screaming at a singer for saying that his bar will sell beer, let’s take a look at one of the dumbest mass exertions of effort since production got underway on Fast X.
In June of 2023, Garth Brooks sat down for a Q and A session with Billboard. During the discussion, he talked about his new Nashville bar, Friends in Low Places. He said that he hoped the location would become “the Chick-fil-A of honky tonks,” which, from a cynical point of view, is about to get so, so funny.
“And yes,” Brooks went on, “we’re going to serve every brand of beer.” This would be the hill upon which a thousand effectively nameless X/Twitter users would die.
The assertion that Friends in Low Places would serve “every brand of beer,” far from being interpreted as a mad man’s dream of a world with infinite kegs, was instead seen as a moral stand on Brooks’ part. If Brooks’ bar would serve “every brand of beer,” people reckoned, and if Bud Light was a brand of beer, then by extension, Brooks’ bar would serve Bud Light.
An opinionated internet turns on Bud Light
In a sane world, the outrage that followed would have been more directly related to the fact that Bud Light tastes like someone left a slice of wonder bread in skim milk overnight. Instead, the frustration stemmed from Bud Light’s advertising partnership with transgender TikTok celebrity Dylan Mulvaney from April of 2023. A single promotional video, lasting nearly 50 seconds and posted to Mulvaney’s Instagram, led to a veritable panorama of responses, ranging from calls for boycotts to bomb threats, to “Daddy Cool” singer Kid Rock filming himself shooting Bud Light cans with a Heckler & Koch MP5 like a big boy.
The week after his “every brand of beer” comments went viral, Brooks put out one of his regular livestreams on Facebook, letting fans know where he stood: “Diversity. Inclusive. That’s me. That’s always been me,” he said. In retrospect, it’s still not clear if he was talking about human diversity or wanting to own every beer ever made. We’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Everybody’s got their opinions,” Brooks continued. “But inclusiveness is always going to be me. I think diversity is the answer to the problems that are here and the answer to the problems that are coming. So, I love diversity. All inclusive, so all are welcome. I understand that might not be other people’s opinions, but that’s OK, man. They have their opinions. They have their beliefs. I have mine.”
Brooks went on, encouraging customers to vote with their wallets by pointing out that the Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk would only keep beers on tap if they sold well. More than that, he made a plea for civility, encouraging prospective clients to “come in, but come with love. Come in with tolerance, patience. Come in with an open mind, and it’s cool.”
In the time since the controversy first arose, most folks have moved on. Posts about Garth Brooks on Twitter have mellowed out and gone the way of all artist mentions on social media in 2024, mostly revolving around his proximity to Taylor Swift. Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk opened in November of 2023, and while there are still a few spectacularly hateful one-star Google reviews trickling in, most complaints revolve around the fact that the place doesn’t seem to play as much country music as people would like. Brooks hasn’t had much to say on the subject of beer brands since his Facebook Live stream in June.
Chris Gaines, meanwhile, has tons of thoughts on the subject, but nobody ever asks him his opinion. They just guard the door to his werewolf dungeon when he emerges once a month and try to keep his terrible hunger sated.
