Garth Brooks - In Pieces

By the summer of 1993, Garth Brooks had already rewritten the commercial rules of country music, and In Pieces is the sound of him pushing his luck on purpose. Written largely on the road between arena dates, it debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and the country albums chart, his third straight album to do so, and went on to be certified diamond for sales past ten million.

Producer Allen Reynolds keeps the band loose and the arrangements big. "Ain't Goin' Down ('Til the Sun Comes Up)" is a breathless fiddle and Telecaster sprint that still functions as a stress test for any bar band brave enough to try it, and "American Honky-Tonk Bar Association" took the album to a second number one on country radio. Then there is the other half of the record: "The Red Strokes" with its piano-driven drama, the ballad restraint of "One Night a Day," and "Standing Outside the Fire," a rock-sized anthem that no one else in Nashville would have attempted at the time. "Callin' Baton Rouge," a Cajun-fired barn burner borrowed from New Grass Revival, remains one of the most reliable eruptions in his live show.

This is the album where Brooks' rowdy side and his sentimental side stopped taking turns and started sharing space, and it holds up as the fullest picture of what made him the defining country artist of the decade.

This reissue is sourced from the definitive 2019 Legacy collection on Pearl Records, and vinyl suits the material. The drums hit with real weight, the electric guitars keep their bite, and Brooks' vocals sit right up front with the warmth the original production was chasing.