Bryan Adams

Bryan Guy Adams (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 among the 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 U.S., 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 U.S. top-ten hit. His 1984 Canadian and U.S. 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 U.S. and Canada, and the power ballad "Heaven", a U.S. number one hit. His 1987 album Into the Fire, with its U.S. and Canadian top ten song, "Heat of the Night", rose to number two in Canada and the top ten in the U.S.

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's Waking Up the Neighbours (1991), a worldwide number one album that sold 16 million copies and was certified diamond in Canada. Another major hit from the album was the Canadian number one and U.S. 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 has 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, later working as a United Nations peacekeeping observer and Canadian foreign service diplomat.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.