Songoftheday 1/9/18 - You might stop a hurricane might even stop the drivin' rain, you might have a dozen other guys but if you wanna stop me baby don't even try...
from the album Waking Up The Neighbours (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 19
Today's song of the day comes from Canadian pop/rock singer Bryan Adams, who had landed the biggest hit of his career as well of one of the most popular songs of the decade with the ballad "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" in the summer of 1991. That song, which spent 16 weeks at #1 in the UK and seven in the States, was such a phenomenon that it could've been hard to follow its success. However Bryan luckily waited just the right amount of time to roll out his sixth album Waking Up The Neighbours. The record, which Bryan co-wrote every song with producer "Mutt" Lange of Def Leppard and Bon Jovi fame, with usual partner Jim Vallance contributing to only four of the fifteen tracks, nevertheless was a big seller, helped along by the second single "Can't Stop This Thing We Started". Written by Adams and Lange alone, it was an insanely catching pop song "toughened up" with lite metal-style background vocals and the requisite guitar solo. Archaeologists decades from now will dig this one up as the missing link between AC/DC and Shania Twain. And I had forgotten how silly-funny this video was. Bryan on top of an electric guitar mechanical bull? You just can't get more 80s than that...
"Can't Stop This Thing We Started" became the second top ten hit from Waking Up The Neighbours in November of 1991. The song spent two weeks at #2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio format chart, and even crossed over to their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") list for a month, peaking at #40. Internationally, the record topped the chart in his native Canada for three weeks, and reached the top ten in Sweden (#3), Ireland (#4), Belgium (#4), The Netherlands (#5), New Zealand (#7), Norway (#7), Switzerland (#8), Australia (#9), France (#10), and Finland (#10). It also went to #12 in the UK, and #14 in Germany. In 1992, the single was nominated for two Grammy Awards, losing out Best Rock Solo performance to the sole female nominee, Bonnie Raitt's Luck Of The Draw album, and Best Rock Song, which went to Sting for "The Soul Cages".
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Here's Bryan perfoming the song at Farm Aid in 1993...
and again in South America in 2007...
And lastly, at the AFL rugby finals in Australia in 2015...
Up tomorrow: the Purple One orders ejaculation, possibly.
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