Garth Brooks is still breaking records at 52.
The country behemoth just topped his own mark for ticket sales in Florida, with more than 56,243 sold — his 1997 mark — for a run of six Jacksonville dates this fall.
He recently told the Orlando Sentinel that he does not understand why he is so successful.
"I wish I could explain it. Of course — I'm beautiful, are you kidding me? I'm talented," he joked. "But I don't get it."
After a 13-year hiatus, Brooks is back for a special tour — one in which he does not schedule new shows until current ones on the docket sell out. So far, he has been selling them out in bunches.
"I've said this in a million interviews: If there was an answer, if God came down, if a hand came down and opened up and the answer was in that hand, I hope it would say, 'The music,'" he says. "That explains it probably more than anything.
"I've roofed houses, I've dug ditches. I worked down at the waste water treatment plant [where] you stood in vats that were 50 feet, 75 feet, 100 feet in diameter and 14 feet high, and you're cleaning them because they've just drained all the [waste] out of them. So [I] know what work is. And every day, I just laugh myself to sleep going, 'Holy cow, this is what I do for a living.' And a damned good living. So I am very lucky."
Is it just a good blend of talent and charisma? Brooks points to a moment with a fan in 1998 for insight.
"We're just talking, and she said, 'You know what I've always thought about you?'" he recalls. "I said, 'Do I want to hear this?' She goes, 'I always felt that you were one of us who just got lucky.' And to be called 'one of us' — that's pretty cool."
The singer is in Atlanta until Sept. 27 and then begins a run of six dates in Jacksonville Oct. 10.
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