"For me there was no message. I was just trying to write great songs": The Bryan Adams albums you should definitely listen to

Cuts Like A Knife (1983, A&M)

Worn raw by the road, Adams recorded this breakthrough third album on home turf at Vancouver’s Little Mountain studio, where his partnership with Jim Vallance audibly started to cook, the pair knocking out set-list staples like This Time and the album’s title track (although it was local singer-songwriter Eric Kagna’s ballad Straight From The Heart that set the boulder rolling down the hill). 

With the album having sold a million copies, the only kicker came on the financial end, Adams realising he’d signed a “really shitty” record deal – and would only be saved by the songs still in his back pocket.

Reckless (1984, A&M)

Playing like a greatest hits – it was mined for six singles – Reckless was a naked shot at the big time, Adams literally roadtesting each song in his car to assess how it might land with drive-time listeners. 

The feather-soft piano ballad Heaven set the tone, before manager Bruce Allen’s complaint – “Where’s the rock?” – sent his charge back to the studio to write the AC/DC-styled Kids Wanna Rock and pump up the volume on latent headbangers Summer Of ’69 and One Night Love Affair. It changed the vibe entirely, and Reckless became unstoppable, shifting 12 million copies and keeping Adams out on the road for two years.

You Want It You Got It (1981, A&M)

Adams’s self-titled debut album had been such a dud, that his gallows-humour working title for the follow-up was Bryan Adams Hasn’t Heard Of You Either (until his label had a word). Commercially there would be no reprieve – nobody outside Canada, it seemed, wanted it, and this second release stalled outside the US Top 100. 

But at least Adams was starting to sound like himself, thanks largely to producer Bob Clearmountain, and there are some cracking moments you’ve either forgotten or never heard, including superior jangle-rockers Lonely Nights and Don’t Look Now.

Waking Up The Neighbours (1991, A&M)

Having wound down his partnership with Vallance, Adams locked into an instant groove with Mutt Lange. And while Waking Up The Neighbours is a few notches below Reckless and …Knife, it’s hard to argue with dazzlers like Can’t Stop This Thing We Started, Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven and There Will Never Be Another Tonight. 

As for (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, the official line is that everybody is thoroughly sick of this slushy track from Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, but try telling us you don’t still feel a shiver when the bass slides in for that glorious second verse.

18 Til I Die (1996, A&M)

In the five years after Waking Up The Neighbours – a period in which grunge had come and gone – Adams’s modus operandi hadn’t changed a jot. And while America was turning away (18 Til I Die peaked at US#31), European fans snapped up an underrated gem whose highlights include the flamenco courtship dance of Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman? and the insistent stomp of The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You. 

Sung by a man pushing 40, the bratty title track sailed just the right side of ridiculous, while the less said about the pervy (I Wanna Be) Your Underwear, the better.

So Happy It Hurts (2022, BMG)

By now increasingly in demand for his photography skills – and with his late-period albums more serviceable than spectacular – little more was expected from Adams than a circling of wagons. What did we know. 

At first glance, So Happy It Hurts felt like a sarcastic album title, but Adams was sincere, leading us out of lockdown with a collection of escapist anthems. From the title track’s gloriously clichéd open-road rock (‘Top down, I got the radio on, alright!’) to the rip-it-up riot of Kick Ass, this was exactly the record we needed, precisely when we needed it.

Into The Fire (1987, A&M)

Adams’s reaction to the mass acclaim of Reckless was to tear up almost everything expected from him on the follow-up. Vallance isn’t a fan, writing on his website that this album marked “the moment we disappeared up our own fundamental apertures and re-emerged in The Land That Fun Forgot”. 

It’s true that the themes were weighty, from the WWI-themed Remembrance Day to the reservation observations of Native Son. But Into The Fire holds proof that Adams can write songs about more than nostalgia and primal urges, and some of his most winning cult cuts are here, like the up-and-at- ’em Rebel and Stones-tooled Hearts On Fire.

On A Day Like Today (1998, A&M)

As the new millennium loomed, Adams felt like a man out of time, falling short of platinum sales for the first time since the early-80s and only kept in rotation by When You’re Gone’s goonish (but admittedly catchy) music video opposite Sporty Spice. 

On A Day Like Today would no doubt have benefited from a spoonful of Mutt Lange’s songwriting sugar, but there’s more quality here than the album’s reduced-rack status would suggest: the effervescent hooks of Before The Night Is Over are vintage Adams, and the original version of Cloud Number Nine remains one of his loveliest ballads.

Get Up (2015, Polydor)

Having ducked out of the studio for seven years after 2008’s so-so 11 (we’re not counting covers album Tracks Of My Years), Adams returned with Jeff Lynne on production, and a batch of better songs. 

In the likely event that you’re streaming Get Up, start with the singles: Brand New Day, Don’t Even Try and Do What Ya Gotta Do all have a winsome 12-string Byrdsian jangle, while brittle-pickin’ opener You Belong To Me sets out its stall as a great lost Sun Records session. Buoyed by a New Year’s Eve TV performance at Big Ben, this, Adams’s thirteenth album reached No.2 in the UK – clearly, he wasn’t done yet.

Room Service (2004, Polydor)

With an on-tour Adams setting up a rig in his hotel room each night, Room Service was perhaps shooting for the same diesel-fumed momentum as Jackson Browne’s road-recorded Running On Empty, but Adams’s travelogue suffers by comparison, its neat concept hobbled by numbing songs and blunt execution. 

Such is his quality control and respect for his fan-base, he doesn’t release ‘bad’ albums as such. But this one is a sleepwalking collection with a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hanging from its door knob, songs like Flying and Nowhere Fast trading their wares then fading from the rear-view mirror without a trace.