Garth Brooks Sings the Praises of His Favorite Pop Stars

Garth Brooks might be one of the most successful artists, of all genres, but his roots remain fully in country music. Still, when asked who his favorite artists are, the country music icon moved to the pop format.

"Country music right now is trying to find itself," Brooks told Variety. "It's okay; every format goes through this kind of thing. Right now we're trying to find our own identity. So I'm gonna stay out of the country format right now and go to the pop format, which I think is in their full-blown self discovery right now. You've got a guy like Ed Sheeran, who's doing all this stuff with so little. But he's found a way to do it with technology's help. So this guy's juggling a thousand balls and he's a one-man show kind of thing."

"Now take it to Beyoncé, who is leading armies — marching bands — and still keeping it together," he continued. "So you respect those both type of people for entirely different reasons, but you respect them the same because they're both juggling a million things. Love that. And some people will tell you it's easier to juggle many things if you're one person than it is to juggle many things if it's a million different people. So each one has its own gift very different from the other. I wouldn't want to take on either one of those. I love being part of a team."

Brooks, who will officially kick-off his three-year stadium tour in March, is the No. 1 selling solo artist in history. With so much success, including seven diamond-certified albums (for sales exceeding ten million units), Brooks has one piece of advice he would offer other rising stars.

"If there is one piece of advice I could tell every artist out there I would tell them this: Don't let reality get in the way because what people say can be done and what people say cannot be done ... they're not correct," Brooks explained. "You determine what can be done. You really do. You can change the course of everything if you just don't f—ing give in. That's what Prince did."

The Country Music Hall of Fame member recently revealed he is considering doing a live duets album with his wife, Trisha Yearwood.

"These two girls wrote in to Trisha and I and said, 'Hey, look, I know you guys are gonna do a duet record. Would you ever think about doing a duet concert where the whole night is duets?'" Brooks said. "And I'm looking at her going, 'No, wait a minute, let's combine the two ideas. What if we cut a live duet record in front of a live audience? And that's how we do our duet record?' And then all of a sudden you have a live greatest hits duet record and people get to watch how a record is made, so you kind of bring the studio to the stage."

"Section it off like you do in a regular studio, cut things live right there in front of people," he added. "I think it's an awesome idea and I think it's something we're probably gonna do. And we're talking about doing it with the Ryman down here in Nashville."

A list of all of Brooks' upcoming dates on his Stadium Tour will be posted on his website as available.

Photo Credit: Getty images/Erika Goldring