Bryan Adams

Bryan Guy Adams CC OBC (born November 5, 1959) is a British and Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and photographer. He is estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million records and singles worldwide, placing him on the list of best-selling music artists. Adams was the most played artist on Canadian radio in the 2010s and has had 25 top-15 singles in Canada and over a dozen in the US, UK, and Australia.

Adams released his eponymous debut album when he was 20 years of age. He rose to fame in North America with the 1983 top ten album Cuts Like a Knife; the album featured its title track and the ballad "Straight From the Heart", which became his first US top ten hit. His 1984 Canadian and US number one album, Reckless became the first album by a Canadian to be certified diamond in Canada and made him a global star with six charting singles including "Run to You" and "Summer of '69", both top ten hits in the US and Canada, and the power ballad "Heaven", a US number one hit. His 1987 album Into the Fire, with its US and Canadian top ten song, "Heat of the Night", rose to number two in Canada and the top ten in the US and several other countries.

In 1991, Adams released "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You", which went to number one in at least 19 countries, including for 16 straight weeks in the UK. It is one of the best-selling singles of all time, having sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. The song was included on Adams' Waking Up the Neighbours (1991), a worldwide number one album that sold 16 million copies, including being certified diamond in Canada. Another major hit off the album was the Canadian number one and US number two hit "Can't Stop This Thing We Started", which also went top ten in several other countries. Beginning in 1993, Adams' hits were mostly ballads, including the worldwide number one or two hits "Please Forgive Me" (1993); "All for Love" (1993); and "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" (1995), the latter two topping the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Adams is ranked 48th on the list of all-time top artists on the Billboard Hot 100. Adams has won 20 Juno Awards and a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media amongst 16 Grammy nominations, and has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and three Academy Awards for his songwriting for films. Adams has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Canada's Walk of Fame, the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. On May 1, 2010, Adams received the Governor General's Awards in Performing Arts – Lifetime Artistic Achievement for his 30 years of contributions to the arts.

Bryan Guy Adams was born on November 5, 1959, in Kingston, Ontario, the son of Elizabeth Jane (née Watson) and Conrad J. Adams, an English couple who emigrated to Canada from Plymouth, South West England in the 1950s. One of his grandmothers and his great-grandmother were from Floriana, Malta. His father, an officer from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the British Army, joined the Canadian Army and later worked as a United Nations peacekeeping observer and Canadian foreign service diplomat.

Adams travelled with his parents to diplomatic postings in Lisbon, where he attended St. Columban's School in Lisbon, Portugal, and Vienna, where he attended the American International School Vienna, in the 1960s, and a Scottish Missionary school, The Tabeetha School, in Jaffa, Israel. He also lived in South Korea and Japan. Raised in Ottawa, he attended Colonel By Secondary School in the Beacon Hill neighbourhood of Ottawa. In 1974, Adams, his mother, and younger brother Bruce moved to North Vancouver while his father was posted abroad. While there, he attended Argyle Secondary School and Sutherland Secondary School.

Adams bought his first electric guitar at the age of 10 in Reading, an Italian brand from Gherson, based on a Fender Stratocaster. In an interview with music magazine Guitar World, Adams said:

He left school to play in a group called "Shock" and used the funds his parents had saved for his college education to buy an Estey grand piano to tinker with. At one point he sold pet food and worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant, which paid the rent. He grew an interest in bands such as CCR and Deep Purple, and attended concerts by Led Zeppelin, T. Rex, Elton John, and Tina Turner. He started working in the Vancouver music scene with bands and as a studio session singer. At the age of 15, he became the vocalist for glam rock band Sweeney Todd, replacing their original vocalist Nick Gilder.

With Adams the band re-recorded "Roxy Roller", the Canadian hit single from their first album, which came in at No. 99 on the US charts. The band then recorded their second album If Wishes Were Horses (1977) with Adams billed as "Bryan Guy Adams" on vocals. Adams left the band at age 16. In 1978, at age 18, Adams met Jim Vallance through a mutual friend in a Vancouver Long and McQuade musical instrument store. Vallance was the former drummer and principal songwriter for Vancouver-based rock band Prism, and had recently quit that band to focus on a career as a studio musician and songwriter. They agreed to meet at Vallance's home studio a few days later. This became the beginning of a partnership which was prolific and continuous through the 1980s, together they co-wrote for Adams and a long list of recordings for other artists, including Kiss, Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Johnny Hallyday, Bonnie Raitt, Rod Stewart, Bonnie Tyler, Loverboy, Carly Simon and Neil Diamond, and while discontinuous, as of 2017, is still in existence.

Later in 1978, Adams signed to A&M records for one dollar. A&M remixed one of Adams' demos as a disco song "Let Me Take You Dancing", featuring Adams' vocals sped up to meet the 122 BPM dance tempo. The song made the Canadian RPM chart in March 1979 along with its B-side "Don't Turn Me Away". In 1979, he made an agreement with Canadian manager Bruce Allen, who at that time also worked for Bachman–Turner Overdrive and Loverboy.

Adams's self-titled debut album, mostly co-written with Jim Vallance, was released in February 1980. With the exception of "Remember" and "Wastin' Time", most of the album was recorded in October and November 1979 at Manta Studios and co-produced by Adams and Vallance. The album was certified gold in Canada in 1986. Singles released from it included "Give Me Your Love", "Remember" and "Hidin' from Love", with the latter having the most success, reaching number 64 on the Canadian RPM Current Hit Radio chart; none reached the US Billboard Hot 100.

Adams's second album, You Want It You Got It, was released in 1981 and contained the FM album-oriented rock radio hit, "Lonely Nights", which reached number three on the US Album Rock Tracks chart. The same song was reinterpreted by Uriah Heep for the album Head First, released in 1983. The most successful song off the album in Canada was "Fits Ya Good" which reached the top 30 on the RPM Top 40 Chart; it also reached number 15 on the US Album Rock Tracks chart. From January to May 1982, Adams spent months traveling on his "You Want It You Got It Tour"; within a few months the album had been picked up across the United States and Adams was soon on tour opening for the Kinks and Foreigner.

Cuts Like a Knife, which was released in January 1983, was Adams's breakout album. "Straight from the Heart" was the first single released from the album; it reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 20 on the Canadian RPM Top 40 chart, and number one on the Canadian Adult Contemporary Chart. In September 1983, Bonnie Tyler released her version for the studio album Faster Than the Speed of Night. The second single, "Cuts Like a Knife", rose to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, number six on the US Album Rock Tracks Chart, and number 12 on the Canadian RPM Top 40 Chart. The third single, "This Time", was also a top 30 hit in the US and Canada. Overseas, the latter two singles were both Top 20 hits in New Zealand, but there was little success in any other countries, aside from "Straight From the Heart" and "This Time" reaching the top 50 in the UK. Three other tracks, "Take Me Back", "I'm Ready" and "The Only One", also received substantial airplay on North American rock radio stations, each making the US Album Rock Tracks chart. The album peaked at number eight on both the Billboard 200 album chart and in Canada, achieving three times platinum status in Canada, platinum status in the United States and gold status in Australia. In October, Adams joined Jim Vallance at the Yamaha Music Festival in Japan. The Music Express national popular opinion poll voted him Canada's best male singer for 1982. In 1983, Adams travelled to America, opening for Journey and performing on over 100 dates in five months. On July 30, 1983, he performed at Day on the Green at Oakland Coliseum.

Reckless was released in late 1984, and peaked at number one on both the Billboard 200 and the Canadian Album Chart, while reaching number two in Australia and number seven in the UK. The album featured six singles, all of which peaked in the Top 15 of the US Billboard Hot 100, only the third album to achieve this: "Run to You" (number six in the U.S., number 4 in Canada), "Somebody" (number 11 in the U.S.), "Heaven" (number 1 in the U.S., number 11 in Canada), written for the film A Night in Heaven, "Summer of '69" (number 5 in the U.S., number 11 in Canada), "One Night Love Affair" (number 7 in the U.S.), and "It's Only Love" (number 14 in the U.S.), a duet with Tina Turner. The album also did well in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, although "Summer of '69" did not do as well at first in the UK since it was not played often on the radio; however, it achieved success later on in the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium. "It's Only Love" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group in 1986. In 1986, the song won an MTV award for Best Stage Performance. Reckless also earned Adams a Grammy nomination for Best Male Rock Performance. In December 1984, Adams embarked on a two-year world tour to launch the album. The tour included dates with Tina Turner for her Private Dancer Tour. Adams won Juno Awards for Best Male Vocalist in each year from 1983 to 1987. Reckless eventually went Diamond in sales in Canada, the first album by a Canadian artist to do so, while reaching 5× and 3× Platinum in the US and UK. Reckless has sold over 12 million copies worldwide, and won the Juno Award for Album of the Year in 1985.