Garth Brooks Gives 24-Hour Sneak Peak of New Album ‘Man Against Machine’
For serious fans of Garth Brooks, Halloween just became the new Christmas.
Man Against Machine, Brooks’ first collection of new material in 13 years, won’t hit retailers until November 11th. That hasn’t stopped Brooks from offering up a sneak peak at the album’s 14 tracks — three of which were co-written by the singer himself — via GhostTunes, the new digital music distributor that Brooks launched earlier this fall. The free preview starts tonight at midnight and runs for a full 24 hours, coming to a close as Halloween gives way to November 1st.
“A friend of mine at GhostTunes asked if we would take a different look at sampling for this new record,” Brooks wrote in an email that was sent to his fans this morning. “He wanted to know if we would speak a little bit on each song as a snippet of the song was playing. Because he asked, we went into studio and tried it. We were all surprised to hear how cool it turned out.”
Available this evening on www.GhostTunes.com, those snippets follow the September 3rd release of the album’s Top 20 single, “People Loving People.” Brooks has yet to release any additional tracks from the record, although he kicked off his current world tour by playing the album’s title track, complete with the clanging sound effects of a pounding anvil, at the top of his September 3rd show in Chicago, Illinois.
Brooks has been promoting Man Against Machine for months, starting with a July press conference in Nashville — where the long-“retired” country star announced a new record deal with Sony, as well as plans to write, record and release an album before the year’s end — and culminating in a colossal, sold-out, cross-country trek that’s been sweeping across the country at deliberate speed since early September. Meanwhile, he’s also taken a jump into the digital marketplace by creating GhostTunes, which he bills as a more consumer and artist-friendly alternative to iTunes. The proof is in the pricing: Taylor Swift‘s 1989 is currently selling for $11.99 at GhostTunes, versus a price of $12.99 on iTunes.
Meanwhile, Brooks has also announced another set of dates for his world tour with wife Trisha Yearwood. The tour will make a weekend stop in Little Rock, Arkansas, on December 12th and 13th, marking Brooks’ first concerts in the area in more than 20 years.