Garth Brooks goes 'Against Machine' in comeback album

NASHVILLE — Two weeks ago, 2014 got its first platinum release, Taylor Swift's 1989. Its second may well arrive this week.

Garth Brooks' Man Against Machine — the first new studio album since 2001 from the Country Music Hall of Famer who has sold more albums in the USA than any other act, save The Beatles — is officially set for release Tuesday, though Brooks plans to soft-release it Monday.

"We've put a lot of pressure on this album, just because of the time off," Brooks, 52, said when he played the album for a gathering of Nashville media last month. "This is just the next music from us. We don't change."

But Man Against Machine shows Brooks' music has changed since 2001, particularly with the brawny guitars of the title track and Cold Like That, which Brooks credits to the influence of current country superstar Jason Aldean.

"Jason brought in the (big) guitars," he tells USA TODAY. "We've always had them there, underlying, but he just stuck them right there in your face. It was cool to see the work of guys who came after you being the reason you could get away with stuff today."

The album also has familiar Brooks fare: songs about cowboys and rodeos, Western-swing tunes and heart-tugging ballads such as Mom, which Brooks performed Friday on Good Morning America, bringing the studio audience to tears.

The album's first single, People Loving People, has found moderate success at radio, peaking at No. 21 on USA TODAY's country airplay chart. Brooks says the song's performance has been "almost identical to We Shall Be Free," an idealistic anthem about love and equality that reached No. 12 in 1992 at the height of Brooks' popularity.

However, Brooks says, "if you've got one statement after 14 years that you're going to lead with, this is going to be the statement that I'm going to lead with. If I had it to do all over again, I'd do it the same way, because there's not a more important statement on this record."

The sales success of People Loving People has been impossible to gauge, because it's available only as a free track for people pre-ordering Man Against Machine digitally.

Like Swift, Brooks has held his music back from Spotify, as well as other streaming services. He also has refused to sell his music on iTunes because it insisted on selling all his tracks individually. Instead, he has helped launch a digital-music service called GhostTunes, which will sell his music — but only as full albums.

And for Brooks, it's all about the album. He has sold 134 million in the USA, and those numbers could rise quickly, as Brooks is selling Man Against Machine individually and as part of a $29.99 digital bundle that also includes most of his previous catalog and a pre-order of another album that could be out as soon as next fall.

Brooks compares Man Against Machine to "a team where there is no superstar, but the album itself wins world championships.

"Is there a Friends in Low Places on this record? No. Is Mom on this record? Yeah. Are there things like Send 'Em on Down the Road, You Wreck Me and Cold Like That? I think they're going to be singles," he says. "I hope they are, because they're fun to play on stage."