2B • Sunday, November 19, 2017 • Daily Corinthian
Brooks on new anthology Staples in fine form as album and lip syncing at CMAs chronicles America’s divide BY MESFIN FEKADU AP Music Writer
NEW YORK — Garth Brooks says he’s happy to share the first of five anthologies he created with his fans while he’s still alive and kicking. “Every artist seems to wait ‘till they’re dead, and I just don’t know how you enjoy that. Or everybody is so old that nobody can remember the stories, it just gets kind all muddied up,” he said in an interview this week. “So just to be able to do this while you’re up and running really was cool.” The 55-year-old singer released “Garth Brooks: The Anthology Part 1 The First Five Years” on Tuesday. It includes a book written by Brooks, five albums — including songs never heard before — and behind-the-scenes stories focused on the years 19891994. “This is kind of been the request of the people that allow me to do what I do. And they want to know every nook and cranny of how this whole thing all started,” said Brooks, who released his debut in 1989. Brooks plans to release the other four anthologies in the next few years. He said he’s halfway through creating part two. The first one took two years to produce. The multi-platinum singer, who is currently on his top-grossing tour, spoke with The Associated Press about the anthology, his decision to lip sync at last week’s Country Music Association Awards and more. AP: What was going through your mind when you looked at the first five
years of your career? Brooks: To be honest I was scared because I’ve told these stories my whole career. Now I was scared that I’d have to go back and find, “Well maybe that wasn’t exactly how it happened. Maybe we were stretching the truth a little bit or whatever to make a good story.” And then what I love is you go back — there it is; there is a first take of “Much Too Young” and that whole thing of you’re looking at all these guys who know what they’re doing and you don’t know what you’re doing. AP: What would the Garth Brooks today tell the 1989 version of Garth? Brooks: What I’ll tell him is, “You’re just so full of (expletive), you’re scared to death and you’re running and you’re praying to God that each day you don’t kill yourself,” you know. But I think that’s all young artists. We got a kid named Mitch Rossell with us right now (on tour), sweetest kid on the planet, but ... I am telling you, he’s so far in the dark simply because the greatest lessons in life cannot be taught. You have to learn them. And it’s just cool to see. So what we do to him is the same thing everybody did to me — they run alongside me with their arms trying to keep me from falling ... and that’s what those guys did for me. Everyone in that book did that for me. AP: What was it like to win entertainer of the year at the CMAs for the second year in a row? Brooks: It was very sweet. ...Everybody was
saying “Hey ringer,” they were calling me ringer ... “You’re a shoo-in” and I was going, “(Expletive), we’re not going to take it home this year” because everybody thinks (we will). ...We’re still celebrating! AP: You’ve performed live for years, so why did you decide to lip sync at the CMAs? Brooks: I think I know Tacoma really well, that was five nights (of shows there) three days right before (the CMAs), it’s an indoor football stadium, so you go in there and you’re just fighting your guts out to try and reach the person that’s in the very back ... it’s real physical and real demanding but very rewarding. So I knew they were going to kick my (expletive) and then I’ve got seven nights in Spokane the day after the CMAs. So the week before Tacoma while we were in Nashville we went in and did a (prerecorded) track just for the CMAs, and then decided we’d do a game-time decision, and when it was game time it wasn’t a hard decision for me to make at all. I don’t think it’s any secret some people have a different opinion. Knowing now what I knew then, even after all this crap, if it happened the same way again next week, I’d do lip syncing again. AP: How’s the new album coming along? Brooks: It’s just in pieces right now. We’ve been touring so hard, so right now it’s in thoughts and pieces. We’re kind of working on the anthology, getting to work on that in your spare time.
Celebrities sign on to support UNICEF World Children’s Day Associated Press
NEW YORK — David Beckham, Millie Bobby Brown and Hugh Jackman are among celebrities and world leaders announced Tuesday as participants and official supporters of the UNICEF initiative World Children’s Day. The organization said events around the globe will focus on child takeovers to mark the day Monday, including a gathering at the United Nations in New York. That’s where UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will welcome children and singer-songwriters Chloe x Halle will perform a new track written for the occasion. Young people in Geneva, meanwhile, will take over the Palais des Nations to perform a special cover of Pink’s hit “What About Us.” In Spain, children will join Leo Messi and others
on the powerhouse soccer team FC Barcelona for a practice session, while in India, cricket will be the game for 22 child athletes who will play with legendary cricketer and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Sachin Tendulkar. Brown, who appears on the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” will kick off the day in Australia. Jackman is lending his voice via video to a fundraiser focused on providing clean water to those in need, to take place in gyms around the world on Saturday. “I am so excited for the first-ever global celebration of World Children’s Day on November 20th with UNICEF,” Brown said in a statement. “It’s our day, everyone! A day for us to raise our voices and unite. So let’s do it — in our schools, with our friends, with our families!” Beckham, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, will
appear in a short film with children. Other events are planned for Copenhagen and Accra, where 10 children from eight African countries will tell the world about the continent in a series of Ted Talkstyle appearances called Africa Dialogues. More than 50 companies and organizations around the world will turn over key roles to children, including LEGO, Qantas and H&M Foundation. In schools, children will also take over classrooms and assemblies to raise their voices and fundraise in solidarity with the world’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable children. “It’s a fun day with a serious point. A day for children by children to help save children’s lives, fight for their rights and help them fulfill their potential.” said Justin Forsyth, UNICEF deputy executive director.
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BY GREGORY KATZ Associated Press
Mavis Staples, “If All I Was Was Black” (Anti/Epitaph) Mavis Staples seems to grow in stature the longer she keeps chronicling America and its contemporary woes. Her constant frame of reference — the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and her family’s proud role as musical pathfinders in those tumultuous years — is
useful as she addresses today’s troubled racial waters. In her third major collaboration with songwriter and producer Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Staples examines the American scene, 2017, and finds it wanting in kindness and compassion. Musically, though, she has found a delicious, bass-heavy groove, slow and easy and perfectly suited for the confident, wise voice of a veteran
singer who has been performing since 1948. “If All I Was Was Black” is overtly political. Tweedy, lead writer on the project, says it would feel wrong not to face what is happening in the United States head on. “We Go High,” for example, builds on a notable phrase from a Michelle Obama speech. It’s a record that describes an America where “people are dying, bullets they’re flying.”
Seal opens dialogue with his listeners on ‘Standards’ album BY RYAN PEARSON AP Entertainment Writer
BEVERLY HILLS, California — Seal is in crisis mode. The Grammy-winning singer says he’s deeply concerned about anti-social social media and the emotionless conversations enabled by technology. He stepped back recently to observe how he and his children used social media and messaging apps — and didn’t like what he saw. “I’ve been going through my own sort of crisis if you like, of late — trying to make sense of it all,” he said. “There’s a lot of contact, a lot of traffic, but very little dialogue. So people are texting each other, but actually having zero dialogue at all, or very little. They’re not saying anything.
Because they’re not real conversations. ... Because there is no emotion, or very little. And if there is emotion, it’s contrived emotion.” Among his responses: He doesn’t shake hands — only hugs. He texts as little as possible, preferring FaceTime or other video apps when holding a phone conversation. And he immersed himself in the “dialogue” of classic pop and jazz songs like “Autumn Leaves” and “Smile” for a new “Standards” album released this month. “I feel that because so much emphasis is on storytelling and the ability of the great singers of these standards — the Sinatras, the Fitzgeralds, the Nat King Coles — and the ability of these great singers, these great voices, to carry this narrative, to tell the
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story — everything is focused on that. ... If that is not intact, everything else falls to pieces,” Seal said. “It has to be dialogue. ... That kind of seems to be the theme with me at the moment -- both kind of personally and professionally.” His 10th studio album was recorded at Capitol Records in Los Angeles, with a band that included musicians who performed alongside Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. The 54-year-old British crooner has been more focused on storytelling in his own songwriting since delving into the classics songbook. “It taught me relaxation, slowing down, and having to be more reflective and focused again on this thing of the narrative. Because that’s really what resonates with people,” he said.