No one's more concerned with the outcome than Brooks himself, known for bouncing between depthless humility and towering confidence. You can't lie to yourself and say you belong in that club because you're so damned new. Debate rages here in Music City over whether the long-ascendant genre is perched on a mesa or already sliding down a canyon. He's worried that his two-year absence from the scene and slight downturn in country radio listenership will affect the acceptance of Horses . The new album is Brooks' first studio release since 1993's In Pieces .
Some stations are amusing listeners with an underground remix of the two versions.
Initially, he had had problems writing and began a desperate search for outside material. But after listening to more than 4,500 songs, he recorded only one, The Change , written by Tony Arata and Wayne Tester. Arata wrote Brooks' huge hit The Dance . About 2,000 songs in, I made a call to all the publishers and said I was missin' country stuff. And believable country stuff was hard to find for me.