Waking Up the Neighbours album throw back by singer songwriter Bryan Adams

First of many in our favouite albums!

The 90’s for many people was a wonder decade for music with bands in the charts including the likes of: Boyz II Men and En Vogue, grunge rock bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and pop legends such as the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls knocking out hits, but with women like Lauryn Hill, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Madonna, Céline Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette dominating the charts, it took Wet Wet Wet and Bryan Adams to secure the longest reign at no.1 for a single.

Waking Up the Neighbours album by singer songwriter Bryan Adams was a cassette in my house, yes not even of CD quality and it was a frequent soundtrack to long journeys and man was it good!

The Bryan Adams 1991 album Waking Up the Neighbours was gi-normous the world over (16 million sold).

My favourite track from the album, Can’t Stop This Thing We Started, got to number two in the U.S. One of the issues with Waking Up the Neighbourhood was that there was some controversy in Canada concerning the system of Canadian Content. Even though Adams was one of Canada’s biggest artists at the time, the specific nature of his collaboration with non-Canadians, combined with his decision to primarily record the album outside Canada, meant that the album and all its songs were not considered Canadian content for purposes of Canadian radio airplay. Even so, the album reached number one in Canada, in addition to the U.K. and other nations. I feel it is one that gets played on certain radio stations now – and yet there are many who overlook it. It is definitely worth fonder and more extensive appreciation. I want to bring in a couple of reviews. The second is positive, whereas the one is a little more mixed:

“Although not as good as Reckless, Bryan Adams’ 1991 album, Waking up the Neighbours, signaled his commercial apex. Bridging the time gap between ’80s arena rock and ’90s angst-ridden grunge, the album also ushered in an era in which Adams became more known for his sweeping power ballads than his straight-ahead rock tunes. This album, filled with nearly 75 minutes of showstopping arena rockers and mid-tempo ballads, churned out no less than five hit singles, the most notable being the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves theme “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You.”

hat ballad spent seven weeks atop the U.S. pop charts, becoming the longest-reigning American chart-topper since Prince’s “When Doves Cry” seven years earlier. The song also became a phenomenon in Europe, becoming Adams’ biggest hit ever. Other singles which followed included the joyous rocker “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started,” which became a number two hit, the mid-tempo ballads “Do I Have to Say the Words” and “Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven,” and the fun, straight-ahead rocker “There Will Never Be Another Tonight.” Waking up the Neighbours was co-produced by Robert Jon “Mutt” Lange, and as a result, many of these songs sound as though they could have easily been Def Leppard recordings, especially “All I Want Is You,” which sounds like “Pour Some Sugar on Me” part two. Nonetheless, Waking up the Neighbours is a fun album and perfect for those who expect nothing more than an old-fashioned good time from their rock & roll”.

I can see what the review says about some of the songs (on the album) sound like they were made by other artists. I think that Waking Up the Neighbours was a great follow-up to the slightly underwhelming Into the Fire. Even though the record was recorded between at a couple of studios – Battery Studios in London, and The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver – it does sound cohesive and together. Away from the string of singles from the album, many of the deeper cuts are strong and warrant a closer look.

TRACKLISTING

Is Your Mama Gonna Miss Ya? 4:40
Hey Honey – I’m Packin’ You In! 3:59
Can’t Stop This Thing We Started 4:27
Thought I’d Died And Gone To Heaven 5:43
Not Guilty 4:10
Vanishing 5:02
House Arrest 3:54
Do I Have To Say The Words? 6:09
There Will Never Be Another Tonight 4:38
All I Want Is You 5:20
Depend On Me 5:05
(Everything I Do) I Do It For You 6:32
If You Wanna Leave Me (Can I Come Too?) 4:40
Touch The Hand 4:04
Don’t Drop That Bomb On Me 5:56

Rolling Stone reviewed Waking Up the Neighbours when it was released in 1991. I think that their review is a little fairer when it comes to the qualities and merits of Bryan Adams’ sixth studio album:

“Waking up the Neighbours’ will, with no sweat, reestablish Bryan Adams as the radio’s hoarse purveyor of energy and fun. A scrupulously careful yet adamantly alive piece of work, this collaboration between the Canadian singer-guitarist and the Midas-touch songwriter-producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange alternates half-tamed sonic raunch like “Is Your Mama Gonna Miss Ya?” and “Hey Honey – I’m Packin’ You In!” with eloquent mall ballads such as “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You,” Adams’s current planet-wide phenomenon, and the even moodier “Do I Have to Say the Words?” For further balance there is fairly soulful midtempo rock (“Depend on Me”) and an oddly toned state-of-the-world finale called “Don’t Drop That Bomb on Me.”

Like most capable pop craftsmen hellbent on seizing the airwaves, Adams and Lange walk a fine line between familiarity and derivativeness, between the blazingly immediate and the outright stale. So some tunes on Waking Up the Neighbours have turned out too broad for anyone’s taste. “House Arrest” doesn’t convey much of the atmosphere of “justa havin’ a ball,” and the hectoring sing-along “There Will Never Be Another Tonight” collapses into silliness in no time flat. More often, however, all Adams and Lange’s high-impact verses and choruses and bridges and subbridges work like charms. The arrangements are only faintly dressed up with well-chosen bits of keyboard and percussion, and Bob Clearmountain’s mix emphasizes Adams’s vocals and Keith Scott’s memorable guitar hooks – not, as per current market fashion, the rhythm section.

Take me back to 1991 anyday!