The World According to Garth

There's a lull in the photo session, so Garth Brooks steps out of the hot lights to cool off while the photographer changes film. He spots a 36-inch-floor fan, howling like a banshee and whirling brisk air around the room. Brooks walks up to the fan, sees it has no grill covering its blades, and sticks the brim of his black Stetson into the outside edges. A sharp flick-flick-flick results, but the hat is undamaged. So, like a kid seeing how far he can go, Brooks slowly pokes his fingers into the rotors.

''Every time I see a fan, I've just got to stick my hand in it, ever since I was a kid,'' he says in a soft Oklahoma accent. ''If the blades go this way'' — he gestures — ''you're fine. If they go the other way, you're in trouble.'' A beat. ''Whoops!'' he yells in mock alarm, yanking his hand away and holding up the forefinger. ''Just the tip!''

Since the release of his debut album, Garth Brooks, in 1989, Brooks has made a practice of taking risks and defying the rules, jamming his hands into all sorts of star-maker machinery and seeing exactly how far he can go: for example, writing ''The Thunder Rolls,'' a song about a man who cheats on his wife, and making a video for it that shows not only the husband's torrid affair but his violent comeuppance. In Nashville, where newcomers are practically issued handbooks on the accepted ways of doing business — which means playing it safe — that's living dangerously indeed.

But that boldness has also helped the 29-year-old to vault far over his less venturesome competition. In April, Brooks toted home six Academy of Country Music awards — one in every category in which he was nominated, including Entertainer of the Year. He's had a steady string of big hits: ''If Tomorrow Never Comes,'' ''The Thunder Rolls,'' and ''Friends in Low Places'' have all been No. 1. His debut album has sold more than 2 million copies and is still No. 50 on Billboard's pop charts after 71 weeks. Best of all, sales for his second, No Fences, which came out a year ago and hit the No. 4 slot on the pop chart, have passed the 4-million mark. And his record company received advance orders of 2 million copies for his just-released third album, Ropin' the Wind.

All that means that Garth Brooks is not only the biggest country superstar since the Urban Cowboy boom of the early '80s, but the most popular male singer of any kind in the country today. And although he has a reputation as a keen strategist — one music journalist even called him ''a calculating fake a clone of George Strait'' — no one is more surprised at the magnitude of Brooks' success than Brooks, who has been a professional musician only since 1985.