BRYAN ADAMS CONQUERED NORTH AMERICA WITH CUTS LIKE A KNIFE

Before Bryan Adams struck worldwide superstardom with the 1984 album RECKLESS and the 1991 album WAKING UP THE NEIGHBOURS, he bursted onto the north american charts with CUTS LIKE A KNIFE in 1983. Always written off by music critics as a mere warm up for RECKLESS, the album actually benefits to some degree by having a more rushed and carefree production feel about it, but at the same time it marked a major improvement in terms of songwriting on the preceding album YOU WANT IT YOU GOT IT, which threw up a much underated Adams rocker titled FITS YA GOOD.

But CUTS LIKE A KNIFE left this 1981 album for dead all round, the opening feel good anthem THE ONLY ONE is another Adams song which even the man himself has ignored and always left out of his live set, TAKE ME BACK really growls and remains one of the nastiest and ferocious songs that Adams has ever recorded, besides the heavy metal epic VICTIM OF LOVE off his 1987 album INTO THE FIRE, with STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART being the big hit ballad off the album.

WHAT'S IT GONNA BE and LET HIM KNOW are weak fillers, but the album ends with another forgotten and ballbuster track that has never made the Adams live set - the atmospheric ballad THE BEST WAS YET TO COME. Here is the well known title track, one of my favourite songs from the 80`s, and in recent times, noticably absent from the FM playlist. Perhaps political correctness is to blame?