On Wednesday night, America’s favorite couple, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, performed a live concert on CBS for coronavirus relief—just one week after the country stars crashed Facebook with a live concert that reportedly brought in over 5 million users.
Garth & Trisha: Live By Request!, which aired April 1 at 9 p.m. EST, included a series of lovely renditions from Garth’s Studio G in Nashville. Garth and Trisha took song requests beforehand, so the couple felt like they were able to connect with their fans during this period of uncertainty. “This is about requests and getting to play music and to be together—apart—if that makes sense,” Garth said.
The hour-long program included a mix of songs, from upbeat originals to heart-tugging covers. The couple kicked things off with Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” and then we got to see Trisha rap Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush.”
“I had never sung that one before,” Trisha said afterwards. “A great song’s a great song, no matter what,” Garth replied.
Then, Garth covered Bob Seger’s “Mainstreet” and Trisha followed with The SteelDrivers’ “If It Hadn’t Been For Love.”
“If anybody wants to know what home life’s like … she’ll just be doing the dishes and break into that song,” Garth said of his wife. “It kills me.”
And, after the overwhelming response to their performance of “Shallow” from A Star Is Born last week, Garth and Trisha once again covered the hit. “I don’t know what to do after that,” Garth joked after the song.
After performing an a cappella version of 1997’s “In Another’s Eyes,” followed by “Love Will Always Win” and “Whiskey Into Wine,” Garth sang one of his wife’s favorite songs: His version of Bob Dylan’s “To Make You Feel My Love.” It brought Trisha to tears.
“That’s our song,” Trisha said to Garth. “That gets me … Can we go to commercial so I can wipe my eyes?” (My heart can’t take it!)
Fans could not get over the incredible performance, taking to Garth’s Instagram to show their love and gratitude. “You both were fantastic. Thank you for sharing your beautiful voices with us,” one fan wrote. “It was an hour of healing and tears!” another added.
Garth and Trisha also teamed up with CBS to donate $1 million to COVID-19 relief efforts. “Every penny that they’re doing for this is going to go to fight (on) the COVID-19 front line,” Garth said. “They’re putting their lives on the line so the rest of us can survive.”
That’s why the performance was so important to them. “In regular-bad times, it’s military in the front line,” Garth said. “And now it’s all the doctors, nurses, volunteers—all those people on the front line. We love you guys. You have all of our strength and all of our prayers.”
“We all know somebody who’s a first responder. This is something that affects us all,” Trisha added. “It’s scary but there’s also a comfort in knowing we all in this together and we will get through it.”
Trisha closed with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” (a special request from her sister) because “this is about hope,” Trisha said.
