COUNTRY EARTHQUAKE

Rape Allegations Against ‘Nice Guy’ Garth Brooks Shock Nashville

The “king of Nashville” refers to his wife as “the queen,” music insiders tell People magazine.

News that “nice guy” Garth Brooks is accused in a lawsuit of brutally raping his longtime hair and makeup artist was “shocking” to some members of the tight-knit Nashville music scene, People reported. Until this week, the country music star and self-avowed wife guy’s biggest controversy was apparently his refusal to stream his music on Apple Music and Spotify. Brooks and his wife, singer Trisha Yearwood, “are the king and queen of Nashville—he literally refers to her as the queen,” a source told People. On Thursday, that image was called into question when a woman who did the couple’s hair and makeup for 15 years filed a lawsuit in California alleging Brooks had sexually assaulted and harassed her in 2019 and 2020. When Brooks learned the woman planned to sue, he filed a pre-emptive, anonymous suit in Tennessee asking a court to quash the allegations before they’d even been made, saying the woman had invented the alleged abuse in an attempt to extort him. Despite the lawsuit, Brooks performed Thursday as planned at his Caesars Palace residency in Las Vegas.