[upbeat music]

[upbeat music]Yeah, so in April 2020, I went to the Pop Conference, which is a yearly gathering of journalists, and critics, and scholars, and musicians talking about music.

And one of the presenters was this guy named Joe Frady, who got up and immediately said that what he had originally submitted, he was not gonna present, that he was going to present this essay that he had written arguing that Chris Gaines was the real person, and Garth Brooks was the character he had created.

And he took you through the life of Garth Brooks, and showed the parallels between them, and showed how Chris Gaines was using this country character to work through some of his own issues with his father, with his own competitive streak, with his label, with his creativity, with his career, and with his own obsession with his own death, and this idea that he would be a ghost before...

That he would die early, basically.

And it was hugely compelling, shifted the way that I think about Garth Brooks, and shifted the way I think about Chris Gaines.

I'm a believer now.

Is that right?