For too long, country music has just been about fat old men in big hats playing up to an outdated stereotype.

But no more. Because Garth Brooks is back. And, as everybody knows, he’s… oh. He’s a fat old man in a big hat playing up to an outdated stereotype, isn’t he? Bugger. OK, anyway, Garth Brooks has decided to come out of retirement eight long years after everybody forgot that he was ever around in the first place.

Oh, we’re just kidding. Everybody knows that Garth Brooks is the top-selling solo artist in American history. What? You didn’t know that? Depressing, isn’t it?

Musicians are a funny bunch – it’s just about the only profession where retirement doesn’t seem to mean retirement. You don’t tend to see too many lollipop ladies holding press conferences to announce that, due to popular demand, they’re coming out of retirement to do a 32-week residency at the junction between Wellington Drive and Juniper Avenue, do you? 85-year-old former passenger aircraft pilots don’t spontaneously decide that, despite their failing eyesight and short-term memory problems, they’ve still got so much to give to the industry.

But with musicians it’s fine. First there was Jay-Z, who once retired for about 15 seconds in between albums, and now there’s Garth Brooks. You may remember Garth Brooks retiring back in 2001, either because he valued his family over his music or because he went a bit mental, grew a teenager’s haircut and a funny beard, decided to call himself Chris Gaines and released an album that everybody ignored.

Well forget all that, because Garth Brooks is done with retirement. As People reports, Brooks used his comeback press conference yesterday to announce a brand new Las Vegas residency:

“We’re going to take the retirement roof off over our head, and I already feel taller,” Brooks said in a press conference at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry... “As for touring, if I can’t eat it, sleep it, breathe it, then it ain’t me.” said Brooks.

We have to admit that Garth Brooks has got a point. We also often base our opinion on what stuff is us on a criteria that includes eating it, sleeping it and breathing it. However, until the day that mattresses start being made from a variety of delicious gases, we’ll never find anything that we can simultaneously eat and sleep and breathe. What Garth Brooks needs to do is lower his expectations.

Anyway, we couldn’t be happier that Garth Brooks is coming out of retirement. After all, he’s only 47 and missing the greatest years of his life. Remember that country music is one of the rare performing arts where credibility is doled out based on how old and wizened and toothless and crotchety and bald you are.

Just look at Dolly Parton. She’s a megastar.

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