Bryan Adams and Pat Benatar

It would be too easy to focus on Adams’ astonishing commercial success to show his appeal. The millions of records sold, the longest running number one single in UK chart history, the Juno’s. Grammy’s. Golden Globes. Oscar nominations. Ivor Novello’s. However, I don’t think that a simple list of awards and sales statistics quite covers just how vital an artist Bryan Adams was and remains to be to this day.

I think to truly get it one has to look at the man’s global influence. One has to look at how his music can be played and truly loved in pretty much equal measure from his native Kingston, Ontario, to the farest reaches of Nepal.

His is music that transcends culture and language, and that makes him one of very few musicians in pop history to truly realize the universal qualities of rock and roll, and that’s saying something.

“Summer of ‘69”? “Heaven”? “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started”? It would take someone with a heart of stone not to love those songs, from his primal, party starting rockers to his elegant, tear jerking ballads.

In all, what Adams has achieved is shown in how people all around the world have embraced his music. Quite simply, he’s still playing and writing some of the best rock and roll music that the great white north has ever had to offer to this day, and there’s never been a better time to join in than right now.

Pat Benetar, born, Patricia Mae Andrzejwski, is originally from Greenpoint, Brooklyn in New York City. With a passion for music and theatre early on in life at the age of eight, Benetar began singing lessons, singing in every school production that she could. She later had the opportunity to enrol at one of the best arts schools in the world, Julliard, but decided that she didn’t want to embark on that particular career path, so studied Health Education instead. Through a couple of twists and turns, and entering a talent competition where she sang a rock song and won, she found herself recording commercial jingles for Pepsi, which is where she finally got noticed and went on to record the huge hit album, “In the Heat of the Night” which was released in 1979, and reached #12 in the US. It was only the catalyst of what would turn into a 30 plus year career, seeing her sell upwards of 30 million albums to date, becoming a huge international success, releasing 30 plus singles, fifteen of them being top 40, and maintaining such a stellar reputation to this day.

Her career doesn’t stop at music as her song “We Belong” was part of a $20 million campaign for Sheraton Hotels, and is now a commercial spokeswoman for the Energizer company.