Maybe it’s because he did it without a lot of glamour and was refreshingly free of gimmicks. Or it could have been just the Everyman image that he effortlessly cultivated. Whatever the reason, it feels like Bryan Adams doesn’t get enough credit for the massive success he has achieved over the course of his career.
Videos by American Songwriter
That success includes one of the most impressive US pop chart runs of any artist of his era. His impressive stretch of Top 40 hits finally ended with a duet. Coincidentally, it would mark the last time that the other artist, an absolute legend, reached that rarefied chart air as well.
Bryan’s Boom Time
It started with a ballad. Bryan Adams’ first song to hit the US Top 40 was “Straight From The Heart”, a slow-dance classic from his 1983 album Cuts Like A Knife that went all the way to the Top 10. Canadian artists didn’t always make that kind of leap into the American charts. As it turned out, Adams was just getting started.
Adams went nuclear with the 1984 album Reckless. Amidst superstar competition all around him, he churned out an astonishing six Top 20 hits from the LP. That included, in “Heaven”, his first ever No. 1. The album, one of the giant smashes of the decade, topped the charts as well.
Many 80s superstars struggled to find commercial footing once the 90s arrived. Adams simply shrugged his shoulders and found a niche all his own. If you needed a romantic ballad for a major motion picture, Adams was your guy. And he turned three of those songs into No. 1s in a span of just five years.
Babs Enters the Picture
Adams went back to the movie ballad well in 1996, but only after he was brought into the mix. Barbra Streisand directed and starred in the film The Mirror Has Two Faces, released that same year. For the lead single from the soundtrack, she brought together quite a conglomeration of talent to put it all together.
Streisand had started the process of writing the song with her longtime musical collaborator Marvin Hamlisch. Meanwhile, David Foster, who was producing the record, suggested that Bryan Adams might make an ideal duet partner. Adams brought prolific writer/producer Mutt Lange into the mix.
Lange and Adams embellished the melody that Hamlisch and Streisand had already begun. Adams then wrote the lyrics. The finished product, “I Finally Found Someone”, featured Adams’ gravelly vocals intermingling quite seamlessly with Streisand’s more polished tones.
“Someone” Special
Adams was no stranger to duets. He’d sung with Tina Turner on “It’s Only Love”. Later, he battled Sting and Rod Stewart to see who could hit the highest in their vocal register on “All For Love”, which topped the charts in 1993. Although the pairing of Adams and Streisand was first resisted by the pair’s respective record companies, it worked swimmingly.
Streisand certainly benefited from the pairing. “I Finally Found Someone”, which made it to No. 8 on the charts in 1996, turned out to be her first Top 40 hit since 1988 and first Top 10 single since 1981. And, as was the case with Adams, the song would prove to be her last time ever making it to that level with a single.
Photo by Mickey Bernal/Getty Images
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.