Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood take fans' song requests, raise funds for COVID-19 relief on feel-good TV special

Following last Sunday’s Elton John-organized all-star charity special iHeart Living Room Concert for America, two other music megastars, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, staged their own intimate TV benefit, Garth & Trisha: Live by Request!, on Wednesday night.

During the hour-long, commercial-free CBS broadcast, the charming country couple performed in their Nashville home studio, Studio G, taking fans’ song requests in real time on Twitter. Last week, Brooks and Yearwood staged a similar all-requests event on Facebook Live — and practically crashed the site, after 3.4 million fans logged on at once. This week on network television, things seemed to go off without a hitch.

The iconic couple of course sang some of their own hits, like Yearwood’s "She's in Love With the Boy" and Brooks’s "The Dance,” “The River,” and “If Tomorrow Never Comes.” But Garth & Trisha: Live by Request! also featured many unexpected covers. “A great song is a great song, no matter what,” said Brooks.

Highlights included Yearwood crooning Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” (“You can't be a chick singer and not be a huge Stevie Nicks fan!” she explained), Little Big Town’s "Girl Crush" (which Yearwood had never sung before), and the SteelDrivers’ "If It Hadn't Been for Love,” as well as Brooks doing a bit of Bob Seger’s "Mainstreet.” The couple also reprised their beautiful duet of A Star Is Born’s "Shallow” from last week’s Facebook Live, and Brooks did his famous version of Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love,” which Yearwood said was one of her favorite staples on her husband’s concert setlists.

The special ended stunningly with Yearwood honoring a request from her own sister, Beth: Judy Garland’s hopeful “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Garth & Trisha: Live by Request! was staged to raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts, alongside an additional $1 million personal donation from Brooks and Yearwood themselves. But the singers admitted that they had benefited from the experience as well.

“We want to you know that you guys, what you're doing [by watching] is also helping us. I mean, everybody has been so nice and saying, ‘Thank you for doing this.’ But we want to thank you, because we want to connect just as much as everybody does,” Yearwood told fans watching at home. “So, this is selfishly good for us too. We appreciate you being here.”

Country fans self-quarantining at home can look forward to another home-concert all-star country broadcast this weekend. While the Academy of Country Music Awards, which were originally supposed to air Sunday, have been postponed until September due to coronavirus concerns, n that awards show’s original 8 p.m. timeslot CBS will now air ACM Presents: Our Country. The two-hour special, hosted by Gayle King, will feature intimate performances by Kelsea Ballerini, Dierks Bentley, Kane Brown and John Legend, Luke Bryan, Brandi Carlile, Eric Church, Luke Combs, Sheryl Crow, Florida Georgia Line, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and Darius Rucker, Thomas Rhett, Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani, Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, and many more. Additionally, the special will honor country legend Kenny Rogers, who passed away on March 20.

For the latest news on the evolving coronavirus outbreak, follow along here. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDC and WHO’s resource guides.

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