Seeing one of the most popular musicians in the world is one thing.
Seeing him perform in a stadium packed with 102,000 fans is another.
Hearing him perform your school and region’s anthem during that show takes everything to a new level — an underground level. A reaction to the song that was so strong, it registered as a small earthquake on a seismograph.
That was exactly the scenario this week when Garth Brooks played a show in Tiger Stadium at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
That would be the same Baton Rouge he references in his song “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” the song that had the crowd stomping and singing with the music turned up so loud an earthquake was picked up by LSU’s seismograph.
Brooks posted a video of the moment on his Twitter account, calling it a “Garthquake.”
The event wasn’t a surprise to geologists, with Dr. Patricia Persaud noting the department had the seismograph ready in advance of the song. The raw data can be found on her website.
It also wasn’t a surprise to Brooks.
“This is going to be loud. This is going to be stupid, and it’s going to go all night long,” he told WAFB before the show.
The song is actually about a girl, but since it name drops Baton Rouge and Louisiana, Tiger fans have adopted it as the unofficial school anthem. It is played at most sporting events and as the closing song in campus-area bars, according to the Washington Post.
The song wasn’t even Brooks’ to begin with. Written in 1978 and recorded by several artists including the OakRidge Boys and New Grass Revival, Brooks released his version in 1994 and it became a massive hit.
Brooks has enjoyed the attention it causes ever since.
“You can get a Grammy, they can put you in the Hall of Fame, but getting a text from your buddies that are in the stadium here when they do ‘Calling Baton Rouge’ and you get to see it will make you cry and make you jump up,” he said. “It’s the coolest thing.”
The occurrence was so loud that attendees wearing Apple Watches during the show got alerts on their devices.
“Loud environment,” the alert read. “Sound levels hit 95 decibels. Just 10 minutes at this level can cause temporary hearing loss.”
Brooks concert isn’t the first event to cause an earthquake to register in the stadium. The same thing occurred in 1988 when LSU beat Auburn in the closing moments of a football game.
And stadium earthquakes are not just at LSU.
The most famous event of this sort came in 2010 in Seattle when Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch ran 67 yards for a touchdown and broke nine tackles in a playoff game against the New Orleans Saints.
Known as the Beast Quake — Lynch’s nickname was Beast Mode — the event registered a 2 on the seismograph.
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