Review
At 65, Bryan Adams is a master of crowd pleasers
Backed by a three-piece band and an army of hits, at his Glasgow OVO show, the Canadian rocker makes sure everyone leaves happy
It’s not a question most of us have ever considered, but is Bryan Adams underrated?
True, you could hardly cast him as an outsider artist struggling to make his voice heard. Nor, with an estimated 75-100 million records sold, could you exactly call him an underdog. But does he really get the credit he deserves?
There’s something unassuming about the 65-year-old rocker – even when he’s waking up the neighbours, he’s never shouting about his own talents.
Blame Canada, perhaps, but if he’d been born in New Jersey, USA, rather than Kingston, Ontario, he might be considered a rock god rather than just rock aristocracy. He’s certainly put in the hours.
After all, this is a man who got his first real six-string a hard-to-credit 56 years ago; a man who hung out with Princess Di and photographed the Queen; a man who has been nominated for 16 Grammys and 3 Oscars; a man who wrote Pretty Woman: The Musical. And yet everywhere he goes, the kids just wanna rock.
Ahead of this August’s Roll with the Punches album, Adams is currently touring the world. And when we say the world, we mean all of it. After shows in Las Vegas, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, he’s playing across the UK and Europe before heading home to Canada later in the year.
That’s two hours forty minutes of tunes every night, with no support act. Not bad for a man nearing pensionable age. When we see him at the Glasgow OVO, performing to a packed house of Bryan Adams tees, tattoos and phone screensavers, he promises to “Try and fit as many hits in as I can remember.” With 79 singles across six decades, that’s no mean feat.
Turns out, he does manage to remember the big hitters. Standouts include an exuberant 18 Til I Die, the lyrics updated from, “Someday I’ll be 18 goin’ on 55,” to “18 goin’ on 65” and spelled out in 20ft letters behind the band. The tenderly strummed ‘Please Forgive Me’ sounds gorgeous with 14,000 voices joining in. Out-and-out rockers like ‘The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me is You’ were born to be played live. And who could forget all-timers such as ‘(Everything I Do) I Do it for You’ and ‘Summer of ’69?’ Not Adams, luckily.
In person, his enduring appeal is easier to pin down than on some of his latter albums. His three-piece backing band know every rock trick in the book – indeed, he probably invented a few of them. That sandpaper voice sounds amazing, cutting through the high notes like, well, some kind of cutting implement. And despite the earnestness of, say, singing a song about an animated horse, he teases out the fun like a man terminally unafraid of looking naff.
There aren’t many musicians who could pull off having a giant, drone-powered, silver boxing glove zooming around the arena. And Adams isn’t one of them. Is he fazed?
He is not. Later there’s a flying car emblazoned with the words “So Happy It Hurts” on one side, and “Bryan Adams” on the other – just in case we’ve forgotten who we’re watching. Trouble is, the “B” is so small it looks like they might have borrowed the car off Ryan Adams then drawn it on. No matter.
The OG Adams takes such Spinal Tap-isms in his stride, offering the kind of unpretentious generosity that really connects with people.
Who else would put up a QR code to take requests from the audience in an orderly manner? Who else would feature their wife and mum in their backing videos? Who else would have the whole band decked out in kilts in deference to their hosts?
Inevitably, one of Glasgow’s requests is The Proclaimers’ ‘500 Miles (I’m Gonna Be)’, which the band attack like true pros, even persuading some (male) audience members to take their tops off and dance while the camera reveals all on the big screen. It’s quite a sight: silly, memorable and laugh-out-loud funny.
This, perhaps, is Adams’ real trump card beyond that extraordinary back catalogue: he’s a crowd-pleaser. Whether effortlessly singing parts written for Tina Turner, Mel C, Sting or Rod Stewart, or traipsing to the rear of the auditorium for an equal-opportunities encore, he wants everyone to be so happy it hurts.
He’s not a rock god, he’s one of us, albeit richer, better looking and with many, many, many more tunes. Whether he’s 18 or 65, you sense, that’s the way he wants it.
Limited tickets are available for Bryan Adams’ Belfast show on 21 May 2025
