Remember Which Garth Brooks Hit He Wrote With His Ex-Wife?
Garth Brooks frequently collaborates with his wife Trisha Yearwood, but many fans might not know that he co-wrote one of his biggest hits with his first wife, Sandy Mahl.
Brooks collaborated with Mahl on That Summer, but only after the original idea that he had started with songwriter Pat Alger didn t quite pan out. In a 1996 television special, Brooks recalled that the original story was about a married woman whose husband is ignoring her at a party, so she goes off and has an affair with a single guy. Brooks producer, Allen Reynolds, told him he couldn t root for the characters in the song, and Brooks agreed.
Garth Brooks scored his fourth No. 1 single with Unanswered Prayers, and it s a song that drew directly from his relationship with his wife.
Brooks teamed with Pat Alger and Larry Bastian to co-write Unanswered Prayers, which tells the story of a man who runs into an old flame at a high school football game that he is attending with his wife. Seeing her again makes him realize that his fond memory of her does not line up with reality, forcing him to see that he made the right choice when he had previously doubted it. Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers / Remember when you re talkin to the man upstairs / That just because he doesn t answer doesn t mean he don t care / Some of God s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers, Brooks sings in the chorus.
On this day (Jan. 12) in 1991, Garth Brooks soared to the top of the charts with his hit Unanswered Prayers, from his multi-platinum-selling album
No Fences. The song, which Brooks co-wrote with Pat Alger and Larry Bastian, was a true-life account of an incident that the country superstar had been through with his then-wife, Sandy. Unanswered Prayers was a big part of my heart that went out on that record, Brooks explains. In October of 89, I saw my old high school flame. And I can say this now at the time I couldn t: For the first two years of my married life, I really thought the girl that was for me was still that girl that was in high school.