Garth Brooks is by no stretch of the imagination obsessed with “Stranger Things.” But the country superstar recently revealed that he is a fan of the hit Netflix series ... “from a distance.”
Earlier this month, a few hours before his first of two concerts in Salt Lake City, Brooks spoke briefly with the Deseret News about the unifying and healing power of music.
Naturally, the conversation turned to “Stranger Things.”
Music has played a significant role on the show, and in Season 4, Volume 1 — mild spoiler ahead — Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” helps protect Max Mayfield from Vecna, the dark monster the teens of Hawkins, Indiana, are determined to defeat.
Max’s saving song became so popular that Bush, an English singer-songwriter, earned her first top 10 hit in the U.S. for the song she released 37 years ago, The Guardian reported.
Brooks isn’t up to date on “Stranger Things” — he said the people who help him with his “Inside Studio G” weekly livestreams are the ones who are “nuts about it” — but he said he feels like he knows the show through the enthusiasm of his crew.
When asked what song of his he believes could best protect people from Vecna — or, in more general terms, lift people out from the pit of despair — the singer briefly paused before revealing his answer.
It wasn’t “Friends in Low Places.”
“We’re lucky enough to have a number of anthems ... for me they’re anthems, because they say something,” he told the Deseret News. “One is called ‘The Change,’ and what it basically says is, ‘They say you’re crazy to try and change the world, but just make sure you understand: I’m not trying to change the world, I’m making sure the world doesn’t change me.’
“And that’s a beautiful thing,” he continued. “So when you feel like you’re down, when you feel like everybody’s against you, you just remember that.”
One hand reaches out
And pulls a lost soul from harm
While a thousand more go unspoken for
And they say,
What good have you done by saving just this one
It’s like whispering a prayer
In the fury of a storm
And I hear them saying,
You’ll never change things
And no matter what you do
It’s still the same thing
But it’s not the world that I am changing
I do this so, this world will know
That it will not change me
Brooks recorded “The Change” — written by Tony Arata, who wrote Brooks’ smash hit “The Dance,” and Wayne Tester — in 1995. The song reached No. 19 on Billboard’s U.S. Hot Country Songs.
If you want to give the song a listen, you’ll have to visit Amazon Music, which holds an exclusive streaming deal with Brooks.
“Stranger Things” Season 4, Volume 2 hit Netflix on July 1.