I was ten when Bryan Adams’s music crossed the border, from Canada to the US, with the song, “Straight from the Heart,” the breakout Top 10 hit from his 1983 platinum album, Cuts Like a Knife.  Of course, being ten, I didn’t control what was being played in the car.  And since the car in question was my mom’s, the version of the song that I heard that imprinted on young me was one of the five covers that Welch songstress, Bonnie Tyler, had recorded for her chart-topping album of the same year, Faster Than the Speed of Night.

In fact, it wasn’t until the following year, with the release of his fourth studio album, Reckless—featuring the hit singles “Run to You,” “Somebody,” “Heaven,” “Summer of ’69,” “One Night Love Affair,” and “It’s Only Love”—that Bryan Adams became a name familiar to my eleven-year-old self, thanks to near-constant radio play and heavy rotation of his videos on the three-year-old MTV.  Then, around the time I was getting ready to head to college, he released the power ballad, “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You,” which he'd recorded for the soundtrack to the 1991 motion picture, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for which he won the Grammy Award for ‘Best Song Written for Visual Media,’ as well as the American Music Award for ‘Favorite Rock/Pop Single,’ in 1992. *

One of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold upwards of 75 million records and singles, worldwide—a figure that places him in the company of such other legendary artists as Bob Marley, The Police, Aretha Franklin, Kiss, Green Day, Barry Manilow, and Nirvana—and he and his work have been nominated for three Academy Awards, three American Music Awards (with one win), five Golden Globe Awards, eleven MTV Music Awards (with one win), and sixteen Grammy Awards (with one win), the most recent of which finds him currently in contention in the category of ‘Best Rock Performance’ for his 2023 single “So Happy It Hurts.”

I attended the first night of his current mini-residency, being presented by AEG Presents Las Vegas, in the Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas, and couldn’t help but notice not just how great he sounds, but how much fun he and his band seemed to be having, onstage; with his deft skills as a guitarist and his gravelly tenor on full display.  What’s more, I was rather taken aback by how many of the people in the audience were under 30 (though I’ll admit, it’s gotten harder for me to discern who’s 17 and who’s 27).  I guess to them, seeing Bryan Adams must be rather akin to how I felt going to see The Rollings Stones or The Who when I was around the same age; and there’s certainly no shame in that game.

An additional seventh night was added to account for the popularity of his show, so get your tickets while you can!

The setlist from Bryan Adams’s concert at Wynn Las Vegas (January 25, 2023), was as follows [click on any link to view the corresponding video on YouTube]:

1. Kick Ass
2. Can’t Stop This Thing We Started
3. Somebody
4. Shine a Light
5. Heaven
6. It’s Only Love
7. You Belong to Me
8. I’ve Been Looking for You
9. Here I Am
10. (Everything I Do) I Do It for You
11. Back to You
12. The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You
13. Summer of ‘69
14. One Night Love Affair
15. Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?
16. Cuts Like a Knife
17. So Happy It Hurts
18. Run to You
19. Straight from the Heart

Bryan Adams: So Happy It Hurts Tour
Encore Theater | Wynn Las Vegas
January 25, 27-28 and February 01, 03-05, 2023
Click HERE for info and tickets

Get into it!
#BryanAdams

[Editor’s Note: * Not only did Reckless reach the top of the Billboard 200 chart, that year; but it sold so many copies that Adams became the first Canadian artist to have an album certified “'Diamond' in Canada.  Further, all six of the singles from Reckless made the top 15 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart; a feat only previously attained by Thriller (Michael Jackson) and Born in the USA (Bruce Springsteen)]