Trivia / Bryan Adams

• Black Sheep Hit: "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" was not well-liked by the producers of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, who complained that it sounded "too modern" (because of the piano, surprisingly, rather than the guitars), so they put it over the end credits. It ended up becoming the biggest hit of the year almost everywhere.
• Blooper: Early CD pressings of Cuts Like a Knife by Matsushita mistakenly use a rejected custom CD logo that A&M Records considered for their releases on the format. Such copies cover up the mistake by slapping on a white sticker with the industry standard Compact Disc logo. This error is also present on early Matsushita CDs for Joe Jackson's Night and Day, Quincy Jones' The Dude, and The Police's Synchronicity (with the error also being present on some CSR Compact Disc pressings of the latter).
• Breakaway Pop Hit: "Have You Ever Loved a Woman?" (Don Juan DeMarco) and "Heaven" (A Night In Heaven).
• Breakup Breakout: When Adams was 16, he joined the band Sweeney Todd. He would record one album with them, If Wishes Were Horses, before leaving and starting a massively successful solo record.
• Creator Backlash: His first single "Let Me Take You Dancing", a disco song. His vocals were sped up on the disco mix to achieve a faster tempo. Never included on CD. He has performed it live on occasion since the late 90s, so he eventually warmed to it, but not enough to release it on CD.
  • For years he didn't think too highly of his first album, but included "Remember" on his Anthology compilation, a fact that surprised Jim Vallance.
• Cut Song:
  • Jim Vallance noted that the s/t had several that were rejected due to being too reminiscent of his early disco period. Vallance wanted two outtakes "Jump" and "Stay" on the album but Adams felt they were not good enough. "Jump" was given to Canadian group 'Loverboy' a couple of years later. Rejected from the first LP were also "Jealousy" (which was used on "You Want It, You Got It") as well as "Take Me Back", "Straight From The Heart" and "I'm Ready" (which ended up on "Cuts Like A Knife").
  • "You Want It You Got It" had "Play To Win", which was given to another artist so not used. It ended up on Reckless [Deluxe] despite its earlier recording date, due largely to the fact it would not have come out otherwise.
  • "Reckless" had numerous ones - the B-side "Diana", six further outtakes that ended up on the Deluxe Edition, and "Hearts On Fire", which was rerecorded for "Into The Fire".
  • "So Far So Good" was left off the compilation of the same name & later released (with overdubs) on Anthology.
  • "You're Still Beautiful To Me" was cut from the reissue of 18 Til I Die, where "I Finally Found Someone" was included instead, despite the fact both would have fit on the same CD. "18 Til I Die" itself had numerous outtakes, though Adams liked two of them enough to play in his MTV Unplugged show (these being "If Ya Wanna Be Bad, Ya Gotta Be Good" and "Hey Elvis")
  • "Back To You" was left off "On A Day Like Today" because he felt it did not work as well as the MTV Unplugged version. The demo was released as a B-Side to "I'm Ready"
• Ending Fatigue: The album version of "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" is almost seven minutes long; it seems to finish at about five minutes in... then the piano comes back in. The music video edit (spliced with footage from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) notably chooses to end at the five-minute mark.
• Dear Negative Reader: He actually threatened to sue Allmusic if they didn't take their article about him down.
• Executive Meddling: Several examples in his career:
  • His first single "Let Me Take You Dancing" had his vocals sped up for its Disco Mix, which was released without consulting Adams, and angered him, despite becoming a hit.
  • Adams said that he actually told A&M to stop releasing singles from Reckless after the label took six off it, which of course, he had to promote every time, on top of a gruelling tour.
  • Implied in the production of the Waking Up the Neighbours album, where it was said that the label pushed Adams to make an album where every track was a potential hit, but with much more input from producer Mutt Lange ^note  Lange had produced the album Hysteria for Def Leppard with a similar intent than from Adams himself (it didn't help that he fell out with his co-writer Jim Vallance during this period). On the following album 18 Til I Die, Adams was given creative control over his project, and it resulted in the album being much more varied.
• He Also Did: Since the start of his career, Adams has given a number of songs to other artists, with two noted examples being "Let's Talk About Love" to Céline Dion and "The Way You Make Me Feel" to Ronan Keating. He also is an accomplished photographer, having released several photo books since the late 90s. One of his portraits of Elizabeth II was used for Canadian stamps in 2004 and 2005.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: His debut single, the disco "Let Me Take You Dancing" and the three chord rock song "Don't Turn Me Away" only appeared on the original single. Adams acknowledges their existence, but has no desire to release them on CD.
  • The B-Side of the fan club release of "Reggae Christmas" - an instrumental titled "Plum Pudding" - has never had a CD release. His Reckless era tracks "Diana", "Reggae Christmas" and "Christmas Time" have all had CD releases, though are out of print.
  • Adams has a few 12" mixes from the 80s that never appeared on CD, and it's unlikely they will. The only one that has a digital release is the "Heat Of The Night" remix.
• Late Export for You: A variant thereof. Japan got "Let Him Know" as a single in late 1982 as they wanted an exclusive to promote his tour there. It was not released as a single elsewhere and instead got released on the album "Cuts Like A Knife" in 1983.
• Named Like My Name: By coincidence, a high school in Texas shares his name, however it was opened two years before he was born.
• No Export for You: "Io Vivo In Te", (the unplugged version of I'm Ready dubbed into Italian), was only released as a single in Italy and wasn't available elsewhere, though its success means it is not hard to find from Italian sellers on eBay. Similarly, the Spanish version of "Everything I Do" titled "(Todo Que Lo Hago) Lo Hago Por Ti", was only released in Mexico and Colombia as a promo single, and a bonus track to some copies of the album.
  • "When You're Gone" [Feat. Mel C] was not released as a single in the US. When it came round to the US release of Anthology, he wanted to release it there to promote the comp, but as Mel C was now obscure to a US audience, he rerecorded it with Pamela Anderson. Since the original version with Mel C had been one of Adams' hits everywhere else, it appeared on non-US releases of Anthology, and the Pamela Anderson version was kept a US exclusive.
• Pop-Star Composer: He wrote an album's worth of songs in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
• Reclusive Artist: To the point that he requested Allmusic to delete his page.
• Three Chords and the Truth: Several in particular "Don't Turn Me Away", "Win Some Lose Some", "Wait & See", "You Want It You Got It", "Before The Night Is Over" and "I Don't Wanna Live Forever".
• What Could Have Been: Adams was invited to have his song, "Only the Strong Survive" in the film, Top Gun, but he refused on principle since he felt the film glorified war.
  • Adams was working on an album with Jim Vallance as co-writer in 1988-1989, but fell out with him. Adams took on Mutt Lange as his co-writer and producer for the next album "Waking Up The Neighbours", and whilst he did use a couple of the songs cowritten with Vallance, they were rewritten in Lange's stadium rock style. As Vallance notes on his site, many older fans who prefer Adams' old style have expressed interest to Vallance in hearing the tracks. However, Vallance notes that the album was only about half finished as neither were particularly satisfied with it. As Adams has released outtakes from Reckless in recent years, there are hopes that we might hear the original Waking Up The Neighbours tracks in future.
  • Adams was approached to join the cast of Star Trek: Discovery, but this ended up not happening for unclear reasons.
  • At least according to The Other Wiki, the working title for You Want It, You Got It was supposed to be Bryan Adams Hasn't Heard Of You Either, a sarcastic reference to the indifference of critics to Bryan's music at the time, but his record company voted against the title.