Who Is Chris Gaines Deeper Place In The Pop/Rock Music?

Gaines’s most popular song, “Lost in You” opened his place in the pop/rock music discourse community. It was marked by Gaines’s clear falsetto and Standard American English accent, electronically created sounds, and lyrics about the universal emotion of love (MacLachlan). Gordon Kennedy recalls that their “jaws were on the floor” when Brooks began recording because of how utterly different he sounded from the Garth Brooks everyone knew and loved. (qtd. in Cox 253) Also, the album cover of Chris Gaines Greatest Hits is very telling about who Chris Gaines was and how he fit into the rock music discourse. He is noticeably slimmer than Brooks was, has long, dark hair and a matching goatee, and is wearing black makeup on his eyes. His face is serious

Chris Gaines is seen as a more elite artist, with more advanced musical talents and understandings. This fits the rock genre because rock music is seen as a “higher-class” music, and the Gaines style and appearance is certainly received as being elite and higher-class (MacLachlan). Garth Brooks was already known for his integration of rock and pop elements into country music, and Duesner notes that in 1991, Garth released a cover of “Shameless” by Billy Joel, “signaling his ambition to escape the Nashville machine.” Chris Gaines worked with Garth Brooks’s style in that it allowed him to expand on what he already did. The alter ego complements Brooks, and while Chris Gaines is vastly different in style and genre, the Gaines project was admirable in that Brooks took a risk in hopes of expanding his musical

Neither fan base accepted the change, and the project even hurt him in his country music discourse. Jensen writes that “To "go pop" is to abandon and betray country music” and “to "crossover" into pop music was to perform, record, and promote country music in a way that would appeal to a larger audience and, thereby, increase radio air play and record sales.” However, great success generally leads fans to believe that an artist has “abandoned” country music (Jensen). Therefore, Garth Brooks was described as “crassly commercial” (MacLachlan). And unfortunately for Garth, rock fans also valued authenticity in their artists, meaning that they did not accept Chris Gaines either because they saw him as Garth Brooks attempting to go outside his