Twenty years ago, the buzz usually surrounding Garth Brooks took an odd turn when one of the most fiscally successful recording artists of all time pivoted from singing country songs as himself to masquerading as the soul patch-sporting, sex-addicted rocker Chris Gaines. To sell his massive country and pop audience on the Gaines character, Brooks took several measures, including making a fake episode of VH1's then-popular Behind the Music series that explains Gaines as someone with a life and career more unbelievable than that of Brooks.

However you may have felt about the Gaines mythology in 1999, it holds up surprisingly well at a time when the ironies of '90s excess often cross streams with genuine nostalgia. The Behind the Music episode features interviews with, among others, real-life music icon Billy Joel, playing himself, and real-life actress Maria Costa, playing herself in a fictional universe in which she and Gaines were dating.

The Behind the Music episode gives its viewers a number of insights into Gaines' entirely fictional life: the various (and numerous) tragedies he endured, his sex addiction, and the details surrounding his father's death on Nov. 15, 1990. If you've never seen it -- or even if you have and want to re-watch (who wouldn't?) -- press play above.

Brooks isn't too keen on talking about Gaines these days -- he has no regrets about it, but there's pretty much no way we'll ever see the movie in which he was supposed to play Gaines, The Lamb -- but that hasn't stopped fans from taking trips down memory lane to reminisce about him. Childish Gambino recently cover the Gaines song "Lost in You," and an event dubbed Gaines Fest is scheduled in Nashville on Saturday (Sept. 28), the 20th anniversary of the release of the In the Life of Chris Gaines album.

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