Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams rose to prominence as a pop icon thanks to his distinctively raspy vocals and the effortless classic rock flair of his T-shirt-and-blue-jeans presentation, amassing successive chart successes that secured worldwide acclaim throughout the 1980s. Emerging as a notable talent in Canada from the late 1970s onward, he first gained traction with the 1983 album Cuts Like a Knife. Yet it was 1984’s Reckless that propelled him to international stardom, driven by the hits “Run to You,” “Heaven,” and “Summer of ’69.” From there he packed arenas in the style of contemporaries Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp while setting new chart benchmarks, most notably via the 1991 power ballad “Everything I Do (I Do It for You).” He sustained that momentum with 1994’s “All for Love” and 1995’s “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman,” maintaining a strong foothold on American charts through releases such as 1991’s Waking Up the Neighbours and 1996’s 18 Til I Die. Loyal followings in the U.K. and Canada endured, reflected in Top Ten albums including 2008’s 11, 2015’s Get Up, and 2019’s Juno Award-winning Shine a Light. Activity continued into the 2020s with the uplifting 2022 album So Happy It Hurts and singles such as 2023’s “You’re Awesome” plus the Tenille Townes duet “The Thing That Wrecks You.”

Born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1959 to an English diplomat father, Bryan Adams passed much of his youth traveling across Europe. The family settled in North Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1973, around the period he began immersing himself in music and entering Vancouver’s local scene. He left school to join glam rock band Sweeney Todd as a replacement for Nick Gilder, providing lead vocals on the group’s second album, If Wishes Were Horses…, at the age of fifteen. Shortly after its 1977 appearance, Adams departed and launched an extended partnership with Jim Vallance, then Prism’s drummer and an aspiring songwriter. Their chemistry proved immediate, yielding a demo that secured Adams a contract with A&M Records in 1978. Two years later his self-titled debut surfaced in Canada and sold solidly. The following year the Bob Clearmountain-produced You Want It, You Got It brought album-rock radio exposure, prompting Adams and Vallance to co-write two tracks with Gene Simmons for Kiss’ 1982 LP Creatures of the Night.

Breakthrough arrived in 1983 with Cuts Like a Knife, an album whose robust rock foundation combined with the melodic hooks that would define his appeal. The former quality surfaced on singles “Cuts Like a Knife” and “This Time,” while the latter shone on the ballad “Straight from the Heart,” Adams’ first American Top Ten entry. That foundation led directly to Reckless, the 1984 album that established him as a superstar. Reckless contained the right material—especially the brooding “Run to You,” the soaring power ballad “Heaven,” and the nostalgic heartland rocker “Summer of ’69,” plus the Tina Turner duet “It’s Only Love,” “Somebody,” and “One Night Love Affair”—so that more than half the tracks became singles, all supported by heavy MTV rotation in the manner of Thriller. While touring internationally for nearly two years, Adams appeared at Live Aid in the United States, co-wrote Canada’s Ethiopian famine-relief single “Tears Are Not Enough,” and continued collaborating with Vallance on material for Loverboy, Roger Daltrey, Neil Diamond, Bonnie Raitt, and Glass Tiger, whose Adams/Vallance song “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)” featured Adams on backing vocals.

Adams followed Reckless with the streamlined 1987 album Into the Fire, which achieved platinum status and yielded Top Ten singles “Heat of the Night” and “Hearts on Fire.” He and Vallance also supplied Joe Cocker’s 1989 hit “When the Night Comes,” co-written with Diane Warren, yet for his next project Adams joined producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, fresh from Def Leppard’s 1987 blockbuster Hysteria. Despite its energetic title, September 1991’s Waking Up the Neighbours proved no straightforward rock album, a fact underscored by the smash “Everything I Do (I Do It for You).” Written for the Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and co-credited to Adams, Lange, and composer Michael Kamen, the power ballad became Adams’ largest success, holding the U.S. Billboard summit for seven weeks and the British top spot for an unprecedented sixteen weeks. The single reached number one in eight additional countries and earned platinum or multi-platinum certification in six. Waking Up the Neighbours consequently ranked as Adams’ second-biggest album, generating the Top Ten hit “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started” plus further singles “There Will Never Be Another Tonight,” “Do I Have to Say the Words,” and “Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven.”

After the two-year Waking Up the Neighbours tour, Adams issued his first hits collection, So Far So Good, ahead of the 1993 holiday season; its new track, the power ballad “Please Forgive Me,” became another Top Ten entry. Absent from the set was “All for Love,” co-written with Lange and Kamen and performed with Rod Stewart and Sting for The Three Musketeers; like its predecessor, the song achieved multi-platinum status worldwide and topped the U.S. charts in early 1994. While preparing his next album with Lange, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman”—another Adams/Lange/Kamen film tie-in from the 1995 Marlon Brando/Johnny Depp comedy Don Juan DeMarco—reached number one in five territories including the U.S. and Canada. His subsequent album, 1996’s 18 Til I Die, performed strongly in England, Canada, and Europe, supported by singles “The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You” and “Let’s Make a Night to Remember.” It also entered the Billboard 200 Top 40 in America and eventually attained platinum certification. Near the tour’s conclusion, Adams taped an MTV Unplugged performance in September 1997, releasing the resulting album that December.

For 1998’s On a Day Like Today, Adams enlisted producers Bob Rock, Phil Thornalley, and Phil Western. One of his most energetic rock outings, the album achieved double-platinum status in Canada and succeeded in the U.K., aided by the duet with Melanie C of the Spice Girls on “When You’re Gone.” A further hits compilation, The Best of Me, followed in 1999.

During the early 2000s Adams concentrated on photography, securing features in Vanity Fair and Esquire. His initial photo collection, Made in Canada, appeared in 1999, followed by Haven in 2000 and American Women in 2005. Musically he resurfaced on Chicane’s 2000 dance hit “Don’t Give Up” and partnered with Hans Zimmer on the score for the 2002 animated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, contributing the adult-contemporary single “Here I Am.” He returned with the 2004 album Room Service, written and recorded partly on tour; it earned platinum certification in Canada and gold in the U.K. The double-disc Anthology arrived in 2005, peaking at number two in Canada and number four in the U.K. In 2006 he received a Golden Globe nomination for “Never Gonna Break My Faith,” written for Emilio Estevez’s film Bobby and performed by Mary J. Blige and Aretha Franklin.

Two years later Adams released his eleventh album, 11, reuniting with producer “Mutt” Lange on two tracks and co-writing several songs with Vallance. Reaching number one in Canada, it earned a Juno Award nomination for Artist of the Year. Certified silver in the U.K., it marked his strongest U.S. chart performance for a studio album since 1996 and led to a North American tour of stripped-down acoustic renditions. The dates extended into 2010 while Adams continued photographic work. Later that year he issued Bare Bones, documenting the acoustic shows. Tracks of My Years, featuring covers of songs by Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and others alongside the original “She Knows Me,” appeared in 2014, topping the Canadian chart and receiving gold certification. Adams collaborated with Jeff Lynne on 2015’s Get Up, which reached number two and earned silver status in the U.K.; that year he performed with Ellie Goulding and Chris Isaak at the AFL Grand Final.

In 2016 Adams and Vallance began composing songs for Pretty Woman: The Musical, a project the artist had pursued for nearly a decade. While developing the score, he issued archival releases: the October 2016 concert video Wembley Live 1996 captured a performance from the 18 Til I Die tour, and the November 2016 hits collection Ultimate included new tracks “Please Stay” and “Ultimate Love.” The Ultimate tour commenced in 2018, encompassing dates in India, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the U.K., the U.S., and Canada. That year Adams also joined Taylor Swift for a duet of “Summer of ’69” on the Toronto stop of her reputation tour.

March 2019 brought Adams’ fourteenth album, Shine a Light. The record featured Jennifer Lopez on “That’s How Strong Our Love Is,” while the title-track single was co-written with Ed Sheeran. It debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, won the Juno Award for Best Adult Contemporary Album, and became Adams’ tenth Top Ten album in the U.K. That November he released The Christmas EP and a duet version of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” with Robbie Williams. In June 2020 he supported the Black Lives Matter movement with a previously unreleased solo take of “Never Gonna Break My Faith.” Later that year he contributed to the BBC Radio 2 Allstars’ Children in Need charity single “Stop Crying Your Heart Out.”

2022 marked a standout year: March saw the “Mutt” Lange-produced fifteenth studio album So Happy It Hurts, a celebratory collection on which Adams performed most instruments. It reached the Top Five in Germany and the U.K. and appeared on the U.S. Top Album Sales Chart; the title track earned a 2023 Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance. Adams also issued a digital collection of his Pretty Woman: The Musical songs and offered reinterpretations of earlier material on the self-released Classic and Classic, Pt. II. In 2023 he partnered with country-rocker Tenille Townes on “The Thing That Wrecks You” and released additional tracks including the anti-war “What If There Were No Sides” plus “Sometimes You Lose Before You Win” and “You’re Awesome,” both featured on the Comedy Central film Office Race.