🎵 AotW Bryan Adams - CUTS LIKE A KNIFE (SP-4919)

[LPJim]

Bryan Adams
CUTS LIKE A KNIFE
A&M SP-4919

All songs written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance except where noted.


1."The Only One" 3:16
2."Take Me Back" 4:41
3."This Time" 3:20 (#24)
4."Straight from the Heart" (Adams, Eric Kagna)3:31 (#10)
5."Cuts Like a Knife" 5:19 (#15)

6."I'm Ready" 3:58
7."What's It Gonna Be" 3:40
8."Don't Leave Me Lonely" (Adams, Vallance, Eric Carr)2:58
9."Let Him Know" 3:11
10."The Best Was Yet to Come" 3:04

Japan 2012 CD Bonus Tracks

12."Take Me Back" (From Live! Live! Live!)5:33
13."The Best Was Yet to Come" (From Live! Live! Live!)2:53

• Bryan Adams — vocals, guitars, piano (co-producer with Bob Clearmountain)
• Jim Vallance — percussion, electric piano on "The Best Was Yet to Come" [1]
• Mickey Curry — drums
• Tommy Mandel — organ, synthesizer
• Keith Scott — guitars, vocals
• Dave Taylor — bass guitar
• Alfa Anderson — background vocals
• Lou Gramm of Foreigner — background vocals

Released 1983 & peaked at #8 in the Billboard Top 200; charted for 89 weeks
Reissued as LP/CD 3288 & later in Japan with bonus tracks

JB

 

[Dave]

Definitive Bryan Adams... The sound was right, the hits were here...! And the "Cuts Like A Knife" vid' really takes you away...!




-- Dave

 

[AM Matt]

Rolling Stone magazine gave it 2 stars out of 5 stars (fair). On "Rockline" (with host Bob Coburn) back in May of 1983, Bryan didn't think that it was his best album though. Matt Clark Sanford, MI

 

[Dave]

...Rolling Stone magazine gave it 2-Stars out of 5-Stars...

Hmmmmm...no surprise once a new career gets going...!

(And I wish it made the Blue Book, along w/ a few other late releases arbitrarily avoided, when there were no unanswered questions about Bruce Springsteen's The River to have to write about Nebraska...--A crystal ball would have shown a better assessment by John Gutterman & Owen O'Donnell in THE 100 BEST ROCK 'N' ROLL RECORDS, in 1991, than Dave Marsh of RS could do about Bruce's entire recorded career 9 years earlier in his RECORD GUIDE book...)

Hmmmm...Bryan didn't think much about his own release here, eh?


-- Dave

 

[jfiedler17]

Yeah, I've got to agree with Dave. This album is truly definitive Bryan Adams. I'm not sure he ever made a better album, actually, though you could make a valid case for Reckless. "Straight from the Heart," of course, was a real monster and one of the finest and prettiest power ballads of the '80s. The title cut rocks as hard, if not harder, than the similar-sounding "Somebody" from the next album, but has the stronger and - pardon the pun - sharper set of lyrics. "This Time" remains one of his more underrated Top 40 hits. And I'm not sure there's any other Bryan Adams album with more instantly catchy non-single album tracks as this one: "The Only One" is so stuffed with hooks, it's hard to listen to it without wondering how in the world A&M didn't release that one as a single; "I'm Ready" has shown up in many an Adams concert and live album over the decades; "What's It Gonna Be" may have even more hooks in it than "The Only One"; and "The Best Was Yet to Come" is one of Adams' finest early-career ballads.
Oh, and Mickey Curry's drumming is amazing throughout. One of the most underrated drummers of the '80s, that guy. His stick work on Adams' and Hall & Oates' albums during those years is just top-notch stuff!

 

[AM Matt]

The song "The Best Was Yet To Come" was about the late Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten (who was shot by her former boyfriend back on August 14, 1980 & was 20 years old). Bryan also written the song "Cover Girl" for the Canadian group Prism also about Dorothy. The late singer Laura Branigan also covered "The Best Was Yet To Come". Matt Clark Sanford, MI

 

[Rudy]

Rolling Stone magazine gave it 2 stars out of 5 stars (fair).

The "rock snobs" often look down on a lot of worthy music. Their loss!

 

[aymnostalgico]

Great song. I remember watching the video on MTV when MTV was real back in the 80's.

 

[Mr Bill]

I remember I had just seen Bryan open for The Kinks in Hampton, Virginia. His second album (You Want It -- You Got It!) had just come out. The music was a little too rocking for my taste at the time, but the energy he and his band gave off was amazing. My roommate at the time was a huge Kinks fan and told me, "almost every group that opens for The Kinks becomes a major act with at least their first album after touring." I didn't think much of that comment at the time, but a few months later, out comes Cuts Like A Knife a the title cut single with a great accompanying video on emptyV (not to mention the other hits of the album like "Summer of '69" and "This Time") and sure enough, my roommate was right.

--Mr Bill