Songoftheday 12/12/12 - I could start dreamin' but it never ends, as long as you're gone we may as well pretend...

Bryan Adams - "Straight From The Heart"
from the album Cuts Like A Knife (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (two weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by Canadian rocker Bryan Adams, who grew up an "army brat" before settling down in Vancouver, Canada in the 70s. He sang lead in the band Sweeney Todd as a teen, before meeting longtime collaborator Jim Vallance and getting signed by A&M Records. However, his first recording legacy wasn't his favorite by a long shot. After recording "Let Me Take You Dancing", A&M sped up the tapes to make it palatable for the disco clubs of 1979, without letting Adams re-record the vocals, resulting in painfully "chipmunked" singing. Even so, the single was an unexpected success, even though reaching #22 on the dance charts, it remained there for almost half a year.

Finally allowed to go back to his "rock" roots, Adams released his self-titled debut album in 1980, which gave him a minor pop hit in in homeland, "Hidin' From Love", which reached #64. The followup, You Want It, You Got It, did even better, with second single "Fits Ya Good" reaching the Canadian pop top-40 and the American rock radio top-20. His next single, "Lonely Nights", was his US breakthrough, reaching the top-3 on the rock chart in 1982, and scaling the pop charts lower reaches as well.

All this buildup came to a head with the release of Bryan's third album, Cuts Like A Knife. The lead-off single, the ballad "Straight From The Heart", written by Adams and Eric Kagna and produced by Bob Clearmountain for a big rock sound they all were building on record number two, and put Adams on the map on pop radio...

"Straight From the Heart" became Adams' first top-10 pop hit, and also reached the rock and adult-contemporary (soft-rock) top-40 as well.

(Click below to read the rest of the post)


But Bryan's version wasn't the first recorded. Ian Lloyd, former lead of the Stories ("Brother Louie"), released his version of the song in 1980....

Fellow raspy-voiced singer Bonnie Tyler also covered the track in 1983...

Up tomorrow: a Doobie is not right.