Garth Brooks — Fresh Horses

Fresh Horses was intended to creatively rejuvenate Brooks's career; it wound up as his biggest commercial disappointment, with sales of "only" four million. Brooks blamed his record label, but too many of the songs simply weren't as good as those on No Fences and Ropin' the Wind. The traditional country element is almost completely replaced here by uptempo rockers and folk-pop ballads. With its martial drums and droning bagpipes, "Ireland" sounds a lot closer to U2 than George Strait, and not as good as either. "The Fever" grafts rodeo lyrics onto Aerosmith's hard-rock original, while "The Beaches of Cheyenne" is a rewrite of Bob Seger's "Against the Wind" as a cowboy soap opera. "Midnight Cinderella" comes off as playfully lascivious, but "She's Every Woman" features a lyric so cloying that it'd make Dan Fogelberg blush. --Rick Mitchell