The Day Bryan Adams Was On Top

07/13/2011
. (Gibson) On this very day in 1991, Canadian rocker Bryan Adams went to no 1 on the U.K. singles chart with "(Everything I Do) I Do it for You." The lush, melancholy power ballad, fueled by its appearance in Kevin Costner's blockbuster Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves movie, kept the top spot for a record-breaking 16 weeks, (the longest #1 run since 1955, when Slim Whitman stayed at the top for 11 weeks with "Rose Marie"). The song rode high in the saddle all through the summer of '91 until the end of October, when U2 took over.

But there's more to the story than meets the eye. This barnstorming Adams hit almost didn't happen because the movie bosses neither liked the song nor wanted it in the film. Early in 1991, Bryan Adams was working on songs for a new album and co-writing with producer and hit-writer Mutt Lange. Composer Michael Kamen needed a song for the Robin Hood movie and gave Adams a melody. The next part, according to Adams, was easy.

"Writing 'Everything I Do' with Mutt took about 45 minutes and it was a moment that I've only felt a few times � it's the moment when you know it's a good song, you don't know if it's a hit, you just know it's good," he told SongwriterUniverse.com. "The track originally started from a long piece of orchestration written by film composer Michael Kamen (who I went on to write many more songs with) and we narrowed the theme down to the little piano intro at the beginning, and then we started writing a top line to it." more on this story

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