Garth Brooks closes Stagecoach on Sunday, April 25, nine years after he last did it. That 2018 Sunday set, his Stagecoach debut, ran past two hours and ended just before midnight, with Trisha Yearwood out for three songs and Lee Brice brought up for "More Than a Memory." Whiskey Riff notes he hasn't headlined a major festival since. He hasn't stayed away entirely, though. In 2025 he walked out during Luke Combs' set to lead the crowd through "Friends in Low Places," and when the 2027 bill was announced he called the festival "a guaranteed good time."
The numbers behind him are absurd. The Country Music Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 2012, puts his RIAA total above 157 million as of early 2022, the most of any solo artist, and he's the only solo act with nine albums past 10 million each. Born in Tulsa in 1962, he started performing while at Oklahoma State, signed with Capitol in 1988, and in 1991 Ropin' the Wind became the first country album to debut at No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200. Six years later an estimated 250,000 people saw him in Central Park.
He retired in 2000 to raise his daughters and came back in 2014 with Sony Music Nashville, playing stadiums for the first time. In 2026 he went the other way with the Blame It All On My Roots Tour, an arena run that brings back the drum cage from his 1996 tour, which he described as "putting the stadium show in a box." His catalog still isn't on Spotify; Amazon Music has been its exclusive streaming home since December 2016.