Garth Brooks “Unanswered Prayers” hit #1 on country chart

Unanswered Prayers Garth Brooks

Writer(s): Pat Alger, Larry Bastian, Garth Brooks (see lyrics here) Released: October 12, 1990 First Charted: November 3, 1990 Peak: 12 CW (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 12.0 video, -- streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Country singer/songwriter Garth Brooks was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1992. With 157 million certified albums in the United States, he is the top-selling solo artist of all time. His 1989 self-titled debut reached #2 on the country album chart and sold ten million copies. In 1990, his sophomore release, No Fences, topped the country charts for 41 weeks and sold 18 million copies in the U.S., making for the best-selling album of his career. The album spawned four #1 country songs, including “Friends in Low Places,” “Unanswered Prayers,” “Two ofa Kind, Workin’ on a Full House,” and “The Thunder Rolls.” “Unanswered Prayers,” the second single, ranked as Billboard’s #9 country song of the year. In the song, a man is at a hometown football game and runs into his high school sweetheart. He remembers how he had once prayed for her to be his forever, but when he looks at his wife, he is grateful that his original prayer wasn’t answered. Brooks says the song was based on a real incident when he and then-wife Sandy bumped into his old high school flame in October 1989. He said, “For the first two years of my married life, I really thought the girl that was for me was still that girl that was in high school. And now man just the realization that what you have is the best for you, and the best you could ever do in your lifetime.” WK Brooks worked on the song with Pat Alger, who said he’d had a similar experience running into an old high school girlfriend about ten years later. He was also pleased things had turned out the way they had. SF The two had worked on the song quite a while, but didn’t have a hook yet. He ran it by songwriter Larry Bastion, who said, “Oh, that’s simple. This song should be called ‘Unanswered Prayers’ because some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.’” WK Brooks said it is “probably the truest song I have ever been involved with as a writer….Every time I sing this song, it teaches me…happiness isn’t getting what you want, it is wanting what you’ve got.” WK Resources: SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 12/29/2022.