‘King of CanCon’ continues to shine

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This article was published 08/07/2019 (2587 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bryan Adams and Winnipeg were seeing a lot of each other for a while, there.

The King of CanCon was here in 2014, on his acoustic Bare Bones tour, and again less than 12 months later on a run of plugged-in dates commemorating the 30th anniversary of his breakout 1984 album, Reckless. Those concerts offered nostalgia-fuelled trips through his back catalogue, one stripped down, the other full and electric. And you can safely bet the number of people who attended both shows is not zero.

When Adams swung by Bell MTS Place on Monday night after a four-year absence from our city’s stages, he had a months-old new album in tow — but you wouldn’t necessarily know it based on the average setlist from this tour. Shine a Light, his 14th studio album, was released in March, and features some high-profile collaborations: the earworm title track is a co-write with Ed Sheeran while That’s How Strong our Love Is is a poppy duet featuring Jennifer Lopez that invites inevitable comparisons to (but is not quite as catchy as) When You’re Gone, his smash 1998 hit with Melanie C., a.k.a. Sporty Spice.

Yet, he only played three songs from Shine a Light on this, the Shine a Light tour. Which isn’t a criticism. At 59, and with a career that’s coming up on four decades, Adams qualifies as a legacy artist. He has a reliable stable of time-tested hits to draw from, and he knows exactly which songs his fans want to hear — or, more accurately, sing along to. He understands the live show and the studio album are different artistic animals. And unlike some musicians at his level, Adams doesn’t eschew his most famous hits in favour of stacking his set with unfamiliar stuff people don’t know the words to yet — but he doesn’t rely on a canned greatest-hits package, either. That’s what makes him so worth seeing live, every time.

Taking the stage 20 minutes after 8 p.m., Adams kicked off the show with a rare newer number, the driving rocker Ultimate Love — one of two new songs included on 2017’s compilation album, Ultimate — which bled seamlessly into Can’t Stop This Thing We Started. (His brand remains that of affable, unassuming Canadian; the latter song was accompanied by a video in which he walks through Toronto’s Eaton Centre and blends in with the crowd, before casually catching a cab like a normal person.) The hit parade continued with the powerhouse Run to You, which he could have saved for the encore.

“My name is Bryan, and I’m your singer for tonight,” he said when he addressed the crowd for the first time, before politely threatening to play forever. “We have 14 albums. I don’t remember them all, but we have 14 albums.”

Shine a Light followed, its big, hooky, arena-rock chorus setting up the perennial set-stealer Heaven, which was mostly taken care of, a capella, by the crowd. Like I said, people were there to sing along. Summer of ’69, which arrived mid-set, was also obviously met with an enthusiastic singalong.

Sometimes, crowd singalongs are a device used to distract from a voice that ain’t what it used to be, but that wasn’t the case Monday night. Adams, as usual, sounded excellent live. The ballads, of course, are a showpiece for his soaring voice, but that trademark rasp lends itself well to the straight-ahead rockers, too — such as a meaty rendition of It’s Only Love, on which Lead guitarist Keith Douglas Scott absolutely shredded and, later, a bouncy You Belong to Me from 2015’s Get Up (the tour in support of that outing took him to Brandon instead of Winnipeg in 2016).

An acoustic rendition of When You’re Gone was a star in a constellation full of them; although it’s killer as a fully produced pop duet, it works just as well with just Adams and an acoustic guitar, which is the mark of a great song. That was followed up with an explosive one-two punch of (Everything I Do) I Do It For You and Back to You.

Winnipeg got a few deep cuts, too, including an acoustic version of 1996’s usually sleazy Let’s Make A Night to Remember. The set could have used an edit, however; some songs, such as Cloud Number 9 earlier in the set, felt rushed, as if he was trying to shoehorn in as many songs as he could. Not that anyone but me was complaining.

He even took a few fan requests, performing Coming Home, from 1981, for “Shannon? Daphne? Jackie!” and Victim of Love for Jake, which he (allegedly) hadn’t performed since 1987, before closing the main set with the always devastating Please Forgive Me and Brand New Day.

Adams saved two songs from the new album for the encore — the breezy little two-minute rocker I Could Get Used to This, which, judging from the reaction from the crowd, many people haven’t heard yet — and a searing version of the traditional Irish song Whiskey In The Jar, which has got to be up there with Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah in terms of recorded covers.

At press time, he was leading an affecting singalong to Straight from the Heart, which he touchingly dedicated to his parents. It shined like the sun.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti

Jen Zoratti
Columnist

Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen.

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