BRYAN ADAMS – “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”
Sixteen Listens For Sixteen Weeks: An Everything I Do Liveblog
This song got to number one for 16 weeks, so I decided to play it 16 times in a row, writing as I went.
Play 1: And we’re off. I’ve honestly hardly heard this in the last twenty years so I don’t anticipate the full horror will strike me for a few plays. In case anyone doesn’t know why I’m doing this, “Everything I Do” – a soundtrack hit from Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves – holds the record for the longest consecutive run at Number One in the UK singles chart. At least one other record has come close, a few have threatened to, but this is still the champ. Sixteen weeks. Almost four months.
The record is – oh look, you know this, but anyway – it’s a power ballad, slower in fact than I remember. Very weighty. It levels up repeatedly, reaches a climax about two-thirds of the way through, then we have a lingering solo (which I didn’t remember at all and have really no desire to hear another fifteen times), a reprise of the pre-chorus and chorus, and that’s your lot.
Play 2: So on first go that wasn’t so bad! I was 18 when this song was around and I dare say a great deal less amenable to ballads in general and romantic ballads in particular. The song got to number one just after I’d left school – I was spending the summer listening to Bob Dylan and picking fruit for a pittance. “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” – now there, I thought, was a love song. I suspect “Everything I Do” might have a rather wider appeal. (Ah – the solo again – now I’m noticing little moans from Bry on it, dear me.) Anyway I hardly noticed this being number one for its first few weeks and certainly bore it no ill will.
Play 3: “This is a little bit sad music” says a passing four-year old. “I don’t like sad music.” Don’t worry, only thirteen more plays to go! Anyway, in the comments Billy Hicks asks the killer question – why this? As he points out the top ten seemed to be this plus half a dozen breakbeat tracks. At the risk of a stab at topicality which will date this entry event more, there’s yer argument for AV right there. If the second preference votes for Rebel MC had been counted in favour of the Prodigy perhaps we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
More seriously I think there’s a sense in which “Everything I Do” was put at number one as a reaction to a lot of the other stuff which was going on in pop, a ballad built on good old fashioned (well, circa 1986) values. Doesn’t quite explain the longevity, though.
Play 4: That piano intro is starting to sound a bit fussy. You also have to think about the subject matter, of course. Most of the really colossal 90s hits are love songs, and very big, demonstrative, Hollywood love songs at that. And there hadn’t been many of those at Number One recently, the last comparable thing was probably “Unchained Melody”, which was from 1965 anyway. Someone in the comments called “I Wanna Sex You Up” distressingly indiscreet, which seems a bit prudish but Bryan is definitely serving up something a bit more romantic – the sexing you up is all in the thrusting, hairy-chested sound of it, not in the devotional words.
Play 5: By this point in 1991 it was simply a big summer hit – I was aware of it, and pretty sick of it, but I still doubt anyone predicted it would have the legs it did. I don’t recall it breaking sales records – the overall levels of singles sales were quite weak, so the reign of the balladosaurs was partly a function of no real competition. Broad-based hits were rarer, so when one did come along it would really clean up.
I’m feeling a bit resentful of its bludgeoning properties by now.
Play 6: The film, right, let’s talk about the film. I never saw it. I understand someone shoots an arrow into a tree at one point.
So let’s not talk about the film yet. I’m definitely noticing little touches in the production – it feels wrong to call them “subtleties” somehow – there’s a kind of quiet keyboard bit going on behind the riffola just before the solo, for instance. It all serves to make the record bigger and more treacly.
Play 7: Someone has pointed out that there’s a SIX AND A HALF MINUTE version of this, if someone throws me a YouTube I’ll treat myself to it, but no, the bulk of these plays are a radio edit.]
What’s dominating the record now for me is Adams’ voice. It’s very effortful, really bringing out his fighting for you, dying for you, etc. It’s no walk in the park, this doing everything he does for you stuff! He’d been around for a while by this time, slogging away without really making much of an impression on me. He’d done “Run To You” and that showed he had the requisite huskiness for this kind of music, but he’s a bit of a nullity otherwise. That’s probably a contributory factor to the success here, though – if you’re buying this after seeing the film, you’re probably not thinking of Bryan Adams at all, you’re thinking of Kevin Costner clad in stubble and lincoln green. I see the sleeve goes very heavy on the film title and very light on the song title, for instance.
Play 8: There’s obviously a sort of Ren Faire appeal going on here, too – there’s something a little archaic, courtly almost, in the phrasing on “search your heart, search your soul, when you find me there you’ll search no more”, and we’re in the decade of Riverdance and Braveheart and a general bodice’n'broadsword revival (which culminates in Lord Of The Rings I guess, except luckily the songs from that are all IN ELVISH, thanks Tolk!). The reading of Robin Hood implied is less freedom fighter than a kind of Chivalry rockist, the man who understands duty, honour, love etc but is forced undercover by the decadent tenor of the times.
Play 9: OK, it’s time for the six minute version. on YouTube complete with Windows Movie Maker style floaty lyrics. The piano seems mixed up a bit higher, the guitars are a little more turbo-charged but it looks like the extra minutes are all at the end, which rather wrecks the song’s dying fall, replacing it with a bit of piano and guitar vamping and Bryan doing some kind of – improvised moaning? It’s a bit like a really bad Rod Stewart track but with a lot more crashing and soloing. Sorry, Bryan, this won’t do at all – all the precisely constructed build up of romance wrecked on this longer edit in favour of a bit of post-coital mumbling and grunting. It’s like Bryan is rolling over and stealing your duvet. Or your bearskin or whatever, this is the 13th century after all.
Play 10: Back to the shorter edit, and the clanging chimes of doom start up again. Lex in the comments points out rightly that, yes, obviously the film tie-in is why this managed such a gargantuan shift at the top (by week ten it had gone past “Two Tribes”, my benchmark for massivity in hits, and everyone had noticed what was going on). One of my pet theories is how pop is basically quite a small medium, easily bullied and shifted off course by the gravitational pull of other artforms – and cinema in the 90s exerted a particular force. So in a way it’s surprising there weren’t MORE Adams-sized hits.
I’m really wincing now when the BIG CHORDS come in, it’s like the song is a mash up of a films love scene and fight scene both at once.
Play 11: OK, definitely hitting a wall here. As someone else said in the comments, who on Earth was buying this after ten weeks? I’ve now managed to get myself into the same place of sullen anger I was in back in ’91, as the nights drew in, I started a crap job in the wines section of Tescos, and this bastard thing was STILL at number one.
Play 12: I mean, sixteen weeks is a really long time. It’s like six Olympics back-to-back, or a double summer holiday back when you were a kid and summer holidays lasted forever. They’re doing the TOTP re-runs on BBC4 and people are shifting uneasily as the Brotherhood Of Man are on it week after week (with, I admit, a worse song than this), and that was number one for way less than this. Maybe I should have taken it as a sign to stop caring about pop music, but there was a lot of stuff around I really loved and believed in. On the other hand, by week twelve you didn’t really hear it much in the wild, it was just out there somewhere, selling to someone. I wonder if there was ever peer pressure on people who hadn’t bought it yet?
Play 13: Time to take stock of what I think of it. The opening is the best part, I think – it’s gentle, it sounds humble (as someone pointed out, his voice does sound pretty fucked, but for me that suits the been-through-a-battle vibe). The piano chord announcing the second section sounds grossly echoey, though, and the rhythm it sets up is really donkey-ish and plodding. By this point Adam’s identical long vowels are starting to grate, too. The “no love, like your love” does the same stuff, but heavier – plate mail now, not leather armour – and it works better that way, approaching something like rock. Which is why the solo is such a drag, a real energy-killer – Bryan sounds even more knackered after it, like the drums are having to prop his wounded frame up. And then he dies, and it’s almost pretty again, or perhaps I’m just glad it’s ending.
Play 14: This time watching the video, a treat I’ve so far denied myself. The denim! Goodness me, I’d forgotten what a poster boy for denim he was. Bryan looks exhausted before it even starts, grizzled and baffled, a very un-starry sort of star. Most compelling is the bassist uncomfortably squatting up and down before the solo.
Play 15: My wife, who was 15 at the time of EID’s chart reign, went to a Bryan Adams gig in Summer ’92 – supported by Extreme. I asked her if there was any particular reaction when “Everything I Do” was played, but no – it was lighters aloft the whole time of course, but no great excitement. “He was a nice man who’d made a nice song and the whole thing was very nice” was her – not damning – verdict. “Everything I Do” is forceful, sweeping, and suchlike – and memorable too – but also rather unshowy and straightforward. A denimish sort of a song. You can imagine it not wearing out its welcome among its constituency, in the way that something more kitschy – a Jim Steinman jam, perhaps – might make fans feel uncomfortable or awkward after a while. It’s a low-calorie type of a power ballad.
Play 16: “Last play!” I announce to the family. “Good!” says my four year old. “Let’s see if the song’s getting better or worser.” I press play. “It’s getting worser.” Too right. Though actually it hit bottom a few plays ago, and now – just as then – a sort of acceptance has set in. By the sixteenth week, everyone knew it was absurd that this laboured but harmless thing had been at number one for so long, but there was amusement at that absurdity. Which isn’t to say I wasn’t grateful when the spell was finally broken – far happier with the band responsible than I’ve ever been before or since.
So sixteen plays later, what have I learned? Weirdly, I still find it quite hard to get a grip on. For all its bluster there’s an amiable space at the centre of “Everything I Do”, a knack of fading into the background which probably stood it in good stead. I boggled at it in 1991 but I don’t think I hated it, and I can’t really hate it now.
4
Tom in Popular • featured content • 6,702 views
#50: Frank Chacksfield’s “Limelight” notched up eight weeks at #2 in four separate runs. Pat Boone’s “Love Letters In The Sand” did seven weeks over three separate runs but the longest continuous run at #2 is “I Swear” by All-4-One.
…which spent seven consecutive weeks as runner-up over summer ’94.
There’s a number 1 coming in sixteen years time that I bought on its tenth week at the top simply out of obligation – I felt like the only one in the world who didn’t have it yet. But that was simply clicking a 79p button on iTunes, I probably wouldn’t have stretched as far as actually going to my nearest music shop and paying for the physical.
The top ten of its twelfth week at the top is another of my favourites ever, and shows rave’s domination in the rest of the chart:
1: Bryan Adams – Everything I Do
2: Salt N Pepa – Let’s Talk About Sex
3: Oceanic – Insanity
4: Erasure – Love To Hate You
5: Right Said Fred – I’m Too Sexy
6: Zoe – Sunshine On A Rainy Day
7: Rozalla – Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)
8: Sabrina Johnston – Peace
9: The Prodigy – Charly
10: Utah Saints – What Can You Do For Me
There’s a wonderful newsgroup post from the time where someone points out all the rave acts in the charts with their first and then-only hit, and predicting that none of them will ever have another one. Zoe and Sabrina yes, but Utah Saints and The Prodigy, well…
Guys there is an ominous gap in the liveblog.
Tom – please let us know if you’re OK!!
I can’t leave work until the end! Fortunately the nursery runs until 5.45…
@21, @47
Thanks for that info. I bought a 12″ of “Blush” – it was definitely later than ’89 (I think I generally only bought 7″s then, young whippersnapper that I was) that it was on release in the UK. Summer 91 kind of rings a bell with me. Lovely, refreshing, invigorating pop song, just like this is not.
@53 – I LOVED Zoe’s minor hit follow-up, “Lightning”. Way more than “Sunshine on a Rainy Day”.
As a nipper, I cried when U2′s The Fly came on Top of the Pops, thus shattering the dream, and I’ve hated them ever since.
blimey that’s a good top (two to) ten…
am i going to be the person to mention that Zoe is now married to Million Pound Poet Murray Lachlan Young?
i love SOARD
Has anyone else seen the Russian film, “Dom Durakov” (House of Fools), set in a lunatic asylum on the borders of Chechnya/Ingushetiya during the 1990s war there, and semi-based on a true story. The heroine has some kind of mental illness that leads her to imagine that she is engaged (or married? or just in a relationship with? can’t quite remember) to our hero Bryan here (and that he is singing the song “Have You Ever Loved A Woman” especially for, and to her)?
The nice thing is, Bryan actually appears in the film, as himself, or at any rate as the woman sees him in her imagination. He went up in my estimation when I learned that, as it’s a kind of arty, highbrow film, not really likely to have had a mass audience even in Russia.
Punctum #51 – “I Swear” was unfortunately the first dance at our wedding in summer ’94. I say “unfortunately” as it was only that song because we’d forgotten to bring along the CD with our real choice on. Rosie will be pleased to know our real choice was “Fields of Gold”, other Populistas may scoff…
MASSIVE APPLAUSE.
Done! Now off to a) vote and then b) drink a great big beer.
And a round of applause for Tom for finishing the marathon, everybody!
Brilliant stuff – although I’m kinda surprised that the summing up seems a bit, well, sudden!
Well done! Off to bed for me.
#65 yes, I’d run out of puff really. I tried to think of something pithier to end it on but it wasn’t to be :)
Someone wrap a foil blanket around the man.
I have a couple of questions: how many times do you usually listen to a #1 before putting fingers to keyboard and putting a mark to it? And over how prolonged a period?
There was a possibility that this exercise was going to stack the deck – which, to your credit, I think you have avoided – but it did make we wonder whether this track has received more or less scrutiny than might otherwise have been the case.
Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves, more on which later, got precisely one Oscar nomination. For best song.
It did not win.
#69 my usual method is to have a “Popular Next Ten” playlist on the iphone, which I keep up to date. Then when I play the next one I let it run on a couple of tracks after, so I end up hearing each record three or four times “intensively” and six or seven ‘distractedly’ I’d guess.
I didn’t put Bryan (or anything coming after him) on said playlist, because I knew I was going to be listening to it so much anyway. So really this is only five or six more listens than a Popular track would usually get.
re 51/2 Thanks for that – should have gone straight to Lena with the question! And well done, Tom. Have a rest.
@61
At least it wasn’t I’ll Be Watching You! FoG isn’t a bad choice at all for the job.
A virtual pint of Ulverston Laughing Gravy for Tom for his splendid effort and sacrifice in the name of the Popular project!
Cheers Tom.
As for my opinion – I’ve not had to listen to it repeatedly, so like others upthread, I might be less disposed to giving it a slating. That said, I find it to be turgid. 4 actually seems generous. As has been mentioned elsewhere on FT, I am a bit of a fan of Springsteen and I have always viewed Bryan Adams as a particularly humourless Springsteen copyist (say what you like about Bruce, but there are flashes of humour in some of his work that I’ve never really got from the – admittedly – more well known Adams tracks). I’ve always thought that Bryan Adams takes all of Springsteen’s worst traits (bombast, strained delivery, a “will this do?” musical backing on the occasions when Bruce’s heart is not totally in it) and built his career on them.
I also think that this is not very well put together; the track builds and builds and then instead of doing something with the gathering momentum at the “no love like your love” section, descends into the notably terrible, slow solo. I’d give it 3.
To be honest, I should probably stick my cards on the table – I find love songs to be an all or nothing proposition, whether linked to a film or not. Either they touch me and thus will get a high mark, 8 or above. Or I find them to be trite and soporific and thus they’ll get a pretty low mark (probably 3 or under, maybe a 4 if I’m feeling generous). A while ago I described The Clash’s #1 as perfectly average – I actually can’t think of a love song that I could describe in that way off the top of my head. Maybe I’ll find one as this decade unwinds.
After spending some time observing and commenting on this epic project (Popular, not (EID)IDIFY), I have noticed that songs such as this, which are overtly POPULIST, and therefore appeal to the unengaged, tend to suffer scorewise, because of their overfamiliarity. Some #1′s become so by happy accident, rather than design, but (EID)IDIFY had #1 imprinted in its DNA by Bryan, Mutt Lange and his army of MIGHTY POWER BALLAD builders. There is something in the song that draws in the unengaged “philistine” and turns away the aesthete, in the same way that FT’s intrepid IPA tasters were quick to reject Greene King in favour of the smoky 1000 IBU brew. Ubiquity or familiarity breeds not necessarily contempt, but indifference, and that’s what I felt towards the song in ’91.
So what does (EID)IDIFY taste like? Well first off, popcorn but after hanging around the charts some time, you get more familiar flavours of Greene King IPA, fish and chips and Glade air freshener, Finally, you get a finish of stale tobacco and sweaty denim.
Compare this with “I’m Too Sexy”, which tastes of Asti Spumante and Impulse deodorant, with a lingering hint of Friday night desperation.
Compare again with the Breakbeat boom, which smells of motorway services and anticipation. On the palate we get bitter chemicals, Vick VapoRub and expensive bottled water, with a heavy stale sweat finish on the jaded tongue.
Those with untrained palates are always going to go with the safe, Greene King option.
Populism appears to be the enemy of engagement among the aesthetes, but the agent of engagement among the masses, and that strikes me as the philosophy of the Indie Kid. That can’t be right, can it?