THE ROCKSTAR ROMEO

Bryan Adams can't stop this thing he started

- ANJULY MATHAI

It was the summer of '87, when The Simpsons had just debuted as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a third term, Teddy Seymour had officially been designated the first black man to sail around the world, and a young Canadian upstart called Bryan Adams performed at the Madison Square Garden in New York. Anyone who witnessed these events would probably have bet on Adams' performance to be the one to sink into the quicksand of history without leaving a trace. The music critics certainly thought so.

"But if a wholesome image and shrewd craftsmanship have made Adams a popular commodity, his music also seems diluted and second-hand," stated Stephen Holden of The New York Times. "The hits that Adams and his band performed Thursday all sounded as if they had come from the same three cookie cutters. And the cliches of their titles-'Heat of the Night, 'Run to You 'Somebody, 'Heaven, 'OneNight Love Affair; 'Straight from the Heart' were compounded by verses that strung together hackneyed lyrical phrases and made each song the equivalent of a trite rock-and-roll greeting card."