Is this Donald Glover covering a Garth Brooks song? Or Childish Gambino covering a Chris Gaines song?
Because yes.
It is both. When this video from actor-producer-writer Glover’s alter ego Childish Gambino made its way to Garth Brooks and his own alter ego Chris Gaines, Brooks had this to say during Monday night’s (Aug. 5) Inside Studio G live Facebook chat. “It’s neat to see somebody that is so friggin’ cool, and to hear him sing that with that kind of passion and love was very, very sweet. He not just covered it, he owned it.
“Music is where we all come together.”
Brooks is so right. Childish Gambino may be known more for his rap and R&B, but somehow, this just works. And because this cover of “Lost in You” on Like A Version — a cover-song segment on Australian radio station triple j — wasn’t a straight-up country song, it feels like a natural fit.
A brief history lesson on why this song wasn’t really a country one:
In 1999, Brooks released an album by his alter ego, Australian alt-rock singer Chris Gaines. “Lost in You” was the first single Gaines released. It was written by Gordon Kennedy, Wayne Kirkpatrick, and Tommy Sims. And while Brooks’ country fans didn’t take to Gaines the way you might think zealous loyalists would, he eventually admitted that he and Gaines weren’t all that different.
“The closer you look, and the more you find out,” he’d said at the time, “you realize Chris Gaines is Garth Brooks. So all it is is a stretching of the arms.”
