Bryan Adams “Shine a Light”
Is it a compliment to call somebody “uncomplicated”? On the one hand, I’d rather not be called “complicated.” Everyone I know wants a dash of Zen Buddhism and a sprinkle of Marie Condo. And those feel like the pursuit of uncomplication. Also, “uncomplicated” isn’t too far from “casual” and “effortless.” Our greatest athletes — Michael Jordan and Roger Federer — make their sports look uncomplicated. Some of the greatest artists -- Agnes Marten and Donald Judd -- vehemently opposed to complication. Even today, when I listen to the music of War on Drugs or Kacey Musgraves, I marvel at their simplicity. On the other hand, being called “uncomplicated” does sound kind of like a personality defect. It’s not far off from being called a “simpleton,” which is at least “slur adjacent.” Uncomplicated can imply a lack of intelligence or sophistication. And, if not intentionally minimalist, it reads as naive or dull. It’s a tough one. I don’t want a complicated life. I don’t want to complicate life. But, also, I don’t think I want to be uncomplicated.
The Rock star who I’ve most frequently heard called “uncomplicated” is, without question, Bryan Adams. In his case, the adjective is normally used pejoratively. It’s meant to convey that he is derivative and uninteresting. That he takes no risks and breaks no new ground. That his songs are formally simple -- few chords, familiar changes and melodies. And that his lyrics and themes are trite to the point of being immature. Though I grew up in the time of his greatest success, the truth is that I never thought much about Bryan Adams. If I am being honest, however, some of those criticisms ring true. Almost everyone I know sings their heart out when “Summer of 69” or “Heaven” comes on the radio. But, I literally know zero people who held onto their copies of “Reckless” or call themselves “Bryan Adams fans.” There’s apparently something about being “uncomplicated” that is easy to like but harder to identify with.
Anyone who was born before 1980 knows that Bryan Adams sold about a hundred million albums and had bushels of hits. For almost twenty years he was radio’s golden goose. When his massive singles first aired on American radios in the 1980s, they sounded completely of the time and place. They were not transgressive and genre-bending like Prince or dayglo and modern like Duran Duran. They just fit in to the middle of the rotation. Had we never seen his face on MTV, we might have just assumed that radio programmers invented Bryan Adams to fill the void between Bon Jovi, The Boss and Johnny Cougar.
He was, of course, very real, inordinately popular and only barely Canadian. He looked American-ish, in his black leather jacket. And he sounded English-y when he talked. But, that voice. He sang Rock and Roll better than anybody else. So, while his songs were accused of oversimplicity, there had never been denying Bryan Adams, the singer. On the Mount Rushmore of raspy Rock and Roll singers he might even be number one. Just technically speaking, he’s probably five times the vocalist Rod Stewart ever was and maybe twice that of Jon Bon Jovi. As for his legacy and what he signifies, though -- apparently forty years on the road, a dozen platinum albums and as many timeless hits gets you some Juno Awards and the unofficial title of “Most Uncomplicated Rock Star.”
While I think that branding is ungenerous, I do, also, see and hear the critics’ points. Adams Rock songs are primarily two or three familiar power chords; his ballads two or three equally familiar minor chords. He can be easily plotted to the Pop side of Bruce Springsteen and the Arena side of John Mellencamp. He wore white, v-neck t shirts like both men and black, leather jackets like Michael Jackson and The Ramones. On the surface, he just looked derivative. Meanwhile, his early hits -- and there were many of them -- played great on the radio. Other than his voice, however, which sounded like it was recorded in an airplane hangar, his songs lacked any distinguishing features. No showy guitar. No three part harmonies. No big beats. They were familiar in a dozen ways and exactly, completely middle of the road -- if you defined the road as Hard Rock on one side and Album Oriented Rock on the other.
As Adams aged, he made some cosmetic changes. His ragged mop of hair became more coiffed. He began hanging out with supermodels. And his Hard Rock hits became gargantuan, slow Rock ballads. “Run to You” and “Cuts Like a Knife” were replaced with the gooey adultness of “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” and “Have You Ever Loved a Woman.” His later singles were bigger and slower. They were also unquestionably beautiful, the sort of songs that you either loved or were embarrassed that you loved. But, in comparison to his 80s hits, they were equally uncomplicated -- formally simple, lyrically saccharine.
Of course, there’s a chance that what most of the world was calling “uncomplicated” was actually something else. I wondered if maybe Bryan Adams was simply opaque. I wondered if he was actually “unknowable.” Who was this guy whose parents were English and lived all over Europe before growing up in Vancouver and then just falling off the assembly line as a ready made Rock Star at twenty two? I figured if you peeled away the layers of Bruce Springsteen, you’d find poetry and sweat. I figured if you did the same with John Mellencamp, you’d get cigarettes and heartland. With Sting you’d probably find Tolstoy and a vibrator. But I had know idea what was beneath the purportedly thin surface layers of Bryan Adams. His blonde hair was always a little too perfect, even when unkempt. His jaw was square, even though his face was scarred. In interviews, he was never funny but also never too serious. If we peeled away everything would we find a songwriting robot? Would we find life size cutouts of Bruce Springsteen, imported from Canada? Or would we find nothing at all?
There was also the very distinct possibility that what others called “uncomplicated” and what I feared was “unknowable,” was actually the opposite. What if we knew precisely what Bryan Adams and his music were all about, but were completely wrong in our conclusions? What if the man and his music were actually impossibly complex? The evidence for this argument is significant. Adams has been an active, global Rock Star for over four decades. For more than two of those decades, he was a reliable hit maker who sold millions of albums. Even today, he is an active, vital artist. He’s not playing state fairs or “Where Are They Now” tours. He’s headlining large theaters and arenas in almost every country in the world. This is not a coincidence. It’s a result of, in part, relentless and strategic touring. It’s obviously a result of market demand -- people like to hear his music. It’s a result of his constant artistic collaborations, which have kept him near to headlines (if not the zeitgeist). He’s sung duets with Tina Turner, Barabra Streisand and J. Lo. And he’s written for Motley Crue and Neil Diamond. Hit songs seem to pour out of him, whether he is writing alone or with Jim Vallance or Mutt Lang. I mean, that is not a coincidence? And that does not sound uncomplicated.
Additionally, there are the things about him that are hard to understand. For one, he has a second career as an art and fashion photographer. To be clear, I have no way of assessing his skills in that field. He has access to famous people. He has access to beautiful people. I can see why galleries would want to show and sell his art. But I’ve no idea if he’s Robert Frank or Ansel Adams or Robert Mapplethorpe, or just a Rock Star with an expensive camera. However, in any scenario, his success in the field represents a complication to the prevailing theory.
And then there’s the matter of Bryan Adams and the AllMusic Guide. AllMusic is the database of song and album information that powers a lot of the music content and metadata on the internet. It features song and album titles, credits, reviews and a hundred other data points about nearly all of the popular music released in the Rock and Roll era. All of it, that is, except the music made by Bryan Adams. For reasons that are entirely unclear, Adams asked AllMusic to remove his information from the site. No bio. No photos. No song or album information. No reviews. There’s no evidence that the content, when it was available on AllMusic, was inaccurate or unkind. There’s no evidence that AllMusic violated any major personal, political, economic, ethnic, animal or environmental rights. But, apparently, for reasons mostly known to him, Bryan Adams did not want part of the service. That decision definitely does not seem uncomplicated.
The “Adams’ Contradiction” led me to a good deal of rumination. I watched dozens of his interviews on Youtube. I listened closely to what he was saying -- which was always plainspoken and almost never revealing. I listened for what he was not saying, wondering if there were subtexts or winks, or if his still waters ran very deep. But, the truth is that I got nowhere. As he aged, he sounded increasingly practiced (come check out my new album and tour) to the point of speaking only in platitudes and cliches. I never found a sense of humor. I never heard an angry or frustrated tone. His ragged, blonde mop top was eventually coiffed with modern style. His scarred complexion aged into weathered maturity. The gaps in his teeth began to signify character. And yet, I found no particular style. No signs of wisdom and growth in his music. And no identifiable character. I wondered if it was theoretically possible that I could not see it because I am not Canadian. Or because I was looking when I should have been listening. I reached dead end after impasse after stalemate.
Ultimately, it seemed obvious that I would not find new answers in old texts. So, I didn’t return to “Cuts Like a Knife,” “Reckless,” “Into the Fire,” or even “Waking Up the Neighbours.” Instead, I opted to see what time might reveal. So, I started over, at the end of his discography -- with 2019’s “Shine a Light.” The album featured a hyper-modern, highly stylized photograph of the singer, drenched in red light. The title track was co-written by Ed Sheeran and the album’s second single is a duet with Jennifer Lopez. And while I was well aware of Adams’ many, previous collaborations, I was convinced that, in middle age, he was clinging to youth -- desperate for relevance. I was unsure if the entire album would be schmaltzy 90s balladry or stripped down Pop with rich beats and autotune. But, based on the album’s cover and selling points, I was predicting something formally uncomplicated and functionally unlikable.
Turns out, I was at least half wrong. “Shine A Light” is highly familiar in that the songs employ the fewest chords necessary and are dominated by a singer who, as he approached sixty, is still plenty capable. Adams always had a knack for a catchy title and chorus, but he never would have been confused for Dylan, or even a part time Hallmark scribe. True to form, this is not an album you buy for the words. Additionally, Adams is back with long time collaborator Jim Vallance for about half of the tracks on “Shine a Light.” In fact, there is precisely zero new ground broken on the album. The chords are either power or minor. There’s nothing that could be accurately called a “guitar solo.” There’s nothing Punk or House or Hip Hop. There are a couple big name collaborations. Every single song is efficiently designed and stamped out. If somebody told me that Spotify had figured out an algorithm for producing music for central and western Canadian women above the age of forty five and that the product was called “Shine a Light” and the algorithm was named “Bryan Adams,” I would not dismiss the idea out of hand.
And yet, the album is also remarkable in many ways. For one, he played (mostly) all of the instruments on the record. Now, I’m not comparing him to Prince or Todd Rundgren, but also, I guess I sort of am. Plus, the guy knows how to edit himself. The longest original song on the album, including the one ballad, is three and a half minutes. With the exception of the autotune of J. Lo’s voice, that spills over into Adams’ harmonies, there is not a single hair out of place on the record. There’s no “what the heck” or “why in the world” moment that plagues many late middle-aged artists. He gets into the hook, then the chorus and then back to the verse and then he might repeat it, or not, and then he gets out. It’s uncomplicated, for sure. But, so is the work of Dieter Rams, the product designer whose “Less but Better” ethos inspired and defined industrial design for over half a century.
“Shine a Light” opens with two, middling counterweights, each trying to reclaim Pop relevance. The title track was co-written with Ed Sheeran and has the high-paced, acoustic jangle to prove it. The chorus repeats itself over and over, as it aims beyond the stars. There’s something about a small town underdog with big dreams. There’s the familiar rasp of the singer. And there’s exactly two and half chords. It stops on a dime, just three minutes after it started, primarily because it has nowhere else to go. And, like many later career Adams’ tracks, it lives somewhere between “pleasant” and “fine.” But it also sounds like something that two famous men -- one young and one less so -- made by emailing a couple MP3s to each other over a weekend.
If the opener was reaching for the zeitgeist, “That’s How Strong Our Love Is,” which features Jennifer Lopez, hopes for the Hot Adult Contemporary charts. Adams’ electric beat sounds appropriately luxurious, but it’s more Lexus than Maybach. The melody hooks and pops — it’s exactly enough to make older people (like me) feel ten years younger, without demanding that we move or think. But the duet ultimately fizzles because the work required to make J. Lo sing perfectly contrasts with the effortlessness of Adams’ voice. It’s not an embarrassment. It’s more of a forgettable curiosity.
With its obligatory singles dispatched, however, the album kind of takes off. "Part Friday Night, Part Sunday Morning" is a slightly modern, countryish number that could have been a hit for Kacey Musgraves or a solid deep cut for Margo Price. It’s short, sweet and hard to deny. It’s also the first of several numbers wherein Adams channels a familiar influence (or follower), stripping the songs of their original character and swapping in his own trademark voice and simplicity. "Driving Under the Influence of Love" is Chuck Berry through Jeff Lynne through Bryan Adams. It would have been a PG-rated throwaway from a mid-70s Stones’ album or a less exciting, possibly forgotten, song from an early 60s Beatles’ album. But taken down to its studs, and with Adams’ voice doing its thing, it's also hard to dislike. Plus it’s in and out in two and half minutes.
Elsewhere, on “All or Nothing,” you can detect the part of Bryan Adams that genuinely loved 70s Hard Rock alongside the larger part that birthed Richard Marx. On “Nobody’s Girl” he takes aim at Coldplay and, on “Don’t Look Back,” he tries to revisit “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” in three minutes and without the cinematic sweep. These are probably among the album’s least interesting moments. They sound like they could have been made by the “Bryan Adams 5000” in a factory in Vancouver. That being said, they are competent filler and almost the opposite of embarrassing.
There are two standout moments on “Shine a Light” wherein Adams’ humanity bares itself. The first is “Talk to Me,” which could easily be mistaken for a mid-70s Lennon or Harrison solo track. The lilting minor chords and the strain in the vocals contrast effectively with the ease and neatness of most of the songs. Not that it’s sloppy or ragged, but it’s absolutely human. And, to close, Adams’ covers “Whiskey in the Jar,” the Irish folk song which was covered previously, and more famously, by Thin Lizzy and Metallica. It’s a surprisingly moving rendition -- just Adams, his acoustic guitar and harmonica. The performance is naked and close mic'd, the sort of production that you’d expect from Rick Rubin. It has some of the haunting, “single take” quality that made Nirvana’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” impossible to ignore. Adams sounds genuinely tired and lost, but still romantic, when he sings about Molly’s Chamber and when he busts out his nonsense Gaelic: “musha rain dum a doo, dum a da, ha, yeah / whack for my daddy, oh.” It’s a stunning ending to a brisk album that is both exactly what you’d expect from Bryan Adams and a reminder of his inordinate skill as a singer and songwriter.
Bryan Adams obviously does not need to make new music. At least, he doesn’t have to make so much new music. He’s impossibly wealthy. He could probably fill large theaters and arenas by just recycling his catalogue. He’s unlikely to score any more chart toppers or platinum albums. The least complicated thing would probably be for him to just coast. But I suspect that’s just not possible. Though his personality is hard to locate, his raison d’etre is not: The guy writes, sings and tours. And, when he needs a distraction, he takes pictures. That’s what he does and and to belabor it is to over-complicated the matter. He also does not seem to tire of it. He does not seem inclined to change much. And, in those ways, he is remarkable, possibly even unique. I cannot think of any other artist who has so successfully, so enduringly stuck with such a simple formula.
While simplicity is frequently admired in Folk or Experimental music, it is apparently less compelling to Rock’s cognoscenti. As a thought experiment, I wonder if Jeff Tweedy simply re-recorded the ten best songs of “Shine a Light,” whether Pitchfork would reward him with a special distinction. I wonder whether my wife and I would drink our morning tea to that album. If James Mercer of The Shins delivered “Shine a Light,” would we marvel at his craft without ever mentioning any debt to Bryan Adams? Or, if The Boss did the same, would tens of millions of Americans be calling it a late career “return to form?” To be clear, I don’t think any of those hypotheticals are fair or unfair. But, as thought experiments go, they all seem kind of plausible. But when Bryan Adams made a tidy, mostly acoustic, one man band record less than a year before his sixtieth birthday, no one batted an eye. There were no hits. Not a whole lot of customers actually. It was entirely ho hum. It was uncomplicated -- and I’m pretty sure that I mean that as a heartfelt compliment.