For most people, a No.1 hit like (Everything I Do) I Do It For You would define their entire career. For Canadian rocker Bryan Adams, it’s possibly not even his most popular song. Even prior to worldwide chart domination with the theme song from Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Adams was already a stadium-packing megastar with a string of radio-friendly hits including Run To You, Straight From The Heart, Heaven and Summer Of ’69.
Adams got his start as a 15-year-old, fronting the Canadian rock band Sweeney Todd. Following his departure from the band, he formed a songwriting partnership with former Prism drummer Jim Vallance, leading to his self-titled debut in early 1980. You Want It You Got It followed a year later and saw Adams begin to make a dent on the charts.
That progress was solidified in some style in 1983 with Cuts Like A Knife, bagging Adams his first top ten hit in the US with Straight From The Heart. A year later, Adams topped the album charts in both
Canada and the US with his fourth solo album Reckless, egged on by a string of high charting singles, including the No.1 Heaven and two further top ten hits in Run To You and Summer Of ’69. Reckless also featured It’s Only Love, a duet with Tina Turner that was nominated for a Grammy.
Adams’ purple patch continued with Into The Fire, which again charted highly at home and abroad and yielded another top ten single in Heat Of The Night.
All of this would pale in comparison to the Adams’ flying start to the next decade, particularly (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, the first single taken from his 1991 album Waking Up The Neighbours. Thanks to its prominence in the hit film Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, the single was a resounding success, hitting No.1 across the world and staying atop the UK charts for a record-breaking 16 consecutive weeks.
Adams would find himself back at the top of the charts not long after with yet another theme song from a film: All For One, a collaboration with Sting and Rod Stewart taken from the film The Three Musketeers. Adams’ status as the flavour of the week for movie songs earned him yet another hit single in 1995’s Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman? from Don Juan De Marco.
After a five-year gap between albums, Adams returned with 1996’s 18 Til I Die. While the album didn’t yield any hits on the scale of its predecessor, Adams was back near the top of the charts in 1998 with When You’re Gone, a duet with former Spice Girl Melanie C.
The new millennium found Adams still a reliable draw at home and abroad, scoring three No.1 albums in Canada and two No.2 albums in the UK. Following the covers album, Tracks Of My Tears, and the Jeff Lynne-produced Get Up, Bryan Adams released his 14th studio album, Shine A Light, in 2019.
2022 saw the release of four new studio albums including, “So Happy It Hurts” (nominated for a Grammy) and “Pretty Woman – The Musical”. In addition to Classic pt. I and pt. II, which feature new recordings of his greatest hits.
