If you were single at the Bryan Adams concert at The Autism Rocks Arena in Dubai on Thursday night, then there’s a good chance that you found the vision of couples holding hands, swaying together and mooning over each other grating.
This journalist belonged to that cloying couples’ club, but that’s one of the occupational hazard of hearing the Canadian rockstar known for his romantic ballads in action.
But once you get over that, the raspy voice of the Canadian pop star will remind why we are still hooked onto his powerful rock ballads.
Check out @bryanadams in action @AutismRocks as he sings his hit Can't stop this thing we started. pic.twitter.com/xDH85RzyoA— tabloid! (@GulfNewsTabloid) March 9, 2017
The 57-year-old singer — dressed in a sharp blue blazer, white shirt and jeans — began his stirring The Get Up Tour with the new song, Do What Ya Gotta Do, before belting out his old hit Can’t Stop This Thing We Started.
Sorry to break it to you, Adams, but it’s your old hits that rock your fans’ boat and stir up fantasies of happily-ever-after in relationships.
“Tonight ladies and gentleman, I am happy to play with my band and I have some love songs for you: We got new songs from my new album, we got old songs and we got very old songs,” said Adams, coughing up the maximum roars for the last bit of his promise. But he had a demand: sing along because he love the sound of his fans singing.
The crowd obliged and would have done any chorus choir proud.
It also made you realise that his utopian love-drenched songs with syrupy lyrics have immense recall value. When he sang Everything I Do, I Do It For You, it was his fans’ who knew the lyrics down pat.
“Let’s light up the desert with your phones,” said Bryan Adams. But it wasn’t just the phones that lit up the desert, but his throaty voice and his unrelenting stamina as he strummed his guitar from one end of the stage to the other, exercised his famous hoarse powerful vocals and emerged the king of romance and nostalgia at the end of a two-hour set.
But not before he took a dig at the slightly remote concert venue.
“Is this still Dubai? Are we still in Dubai because it took us four hours from the hotel to get out here. What made them decide to put it here and why not there,” said Adams.
But in all fairness, getting in and out of the venue wasn’t a hassle - unlike the recent Guns N’Roses gig.
While his new songs were given a patient listen, it was long-enduring hits such as Summer of 69, Please Forgive Me and Straight From The Heart that made hearts beat faster and took you down a trip down the ‘90s lane.
