Bryan Adams

Bryan Guy Adams CC OBC (born November 5, 1959) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and photographer. He is estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million records and singles worldwide, placing him on the list of best-selling music artists. Adams was the most played artist on Canadian radio in the 2010s and has had 25 top-15 singles in Canada and over a dozen in the US, UK, and Australia.

Adams released his eponymous debut album when he was 20 years of age. He rose to fame in North America with the 1983 top ten album Cuts Like a Knife; the album featured its title track and the ballad "Straight from the Heart", which became his first US top-ten hit. His 1984 Canadian and US number one album, Reckless, became the first album by a Canadian to be certified diamond in Canada and made Adams a global star; the album's six charting singles included "Run to You" and "Summer of '69", both top ten hits in the US and Canada, and the power ballad "Heaven", a US number one hit. His 1987 album Into the Fire, with its US and Canadian top ten song, "Heat of the Night", rose to number two in Canada and the top ten in the US.

In 1991, Adams released "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You", which reached number one in at least 19 countries. The single was number one for 16 straight weeks in the UK; it is one of the best-selling singles of all time, having sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. The song was included on Adams' Waking Up the Neighbours (1991), a worldwide number one album that sold 16 million copies and was certified diamond in Canada. Another major hit off the album was the Canadian number one and US number two hit "Can't Stop This Thing We Started". Beginning in 1993, Adams' hits were mostly ballads, including the worldwide number one or two hits "Please Forgive Me" (1993); "All for Love" (1993); and "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" (1995), the latter two topping the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Adams was ranked 48th on the list of all-time top artists on the Billboard Hot 100. Adams had won 20 Juno Awards and a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media amongst 16 Grammy nominations. He has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and three Academy Awards for his songwriting for films. Adams has been inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Canada's Walk of Fame, the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. On May 1, 2010, Adams received the Governor General's Awards in Performing Arts – Lifetime Artistic Achievement for his 30 years of contributions to the arts.

Bryan Guy Adams was born on November 5, 1959, in Kingston, Ontario. He is the son of Elizabeth Jane (née Watson) and Conrad J. Adams, an English couple who emigrated to Canada from Plymouth, South West England in the 1950s. One of his grandmothers was from Malta, as was one of his great-grandmothers. His father was a British Army officer who joined the Canadian Army then worked as a United Nations peacekeeping observer and Canadian foreign service diplomat.

Adams travelled with his parents to a diplomatic posting in Lisbon, where he attended St. Columban's School. At various points, he and his family also resided in Israel, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Raised in Ottawa, he attended Colonel By Secondary School in the Beacon Hill neighbourhood of Ottawa.

Adams bought his first electric guitar at the age of 10 in Reading, an Italian brand from Gherson, based on a Fender Stratocaster. In an interview with music magazine Guitar World, Adams said:

I bought an imitation Les Paul at a Five and Dime store in Ottawa, Canada, in 1971. ... Before that, I had an imitation Strat which I bought in Reading, England in 1970. It felt real at the time to have a Les Paul, even though I'm a massive Ritchie Blackmore fan – still am. I was heavily into Humble Pie's Rockin' the Fillmore album at the time, and both Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott were on Les Pauls. It's rock guitar heaven, that album.