Bryan Adams has duetted with some big stars during his career - the likes of Tina Turner, Sting, Rod Stewart and Spice Girl Mel C - but history will confirm that, in 2018, the Groover from Vancouver shared the stage with someone who’s arguably surpassed all of them on her way to becoming a cultural icon.
We’re talking, of course, about Taylor Swift, who prefaced Adams’ arrival in Toronto on 4 August by telling the crowd that she was about to sing “just one of my favourite songs ever written.”
That song was Adams’ 1985 hit Summer of ‘69 and, after Swift had sung the first few lines, the Canadian rocker joined her to perform the rest of it (footage shows that the big screens displayed his name lest some of Swift’s younger fans were wondering who they were watching).
Adams has now been looking back on the moment in an interview with Guitar World, and suggests that ‘Taylor’s version’ of Summer of ‘69 represents a rare case of someone doing justice to his material.
“There’s been all kinds of people who have taken the songs and remixed, rearranged, re-recorded, and done their versions, but very seldom has anyone beaten the original,” he says. “The only person I can think of who did a version of Summer of ’69, and did such justice was Taylor Swift.”
Explaining what he liked most about their duet, Adams says: “She sang the lead vocal, I sang the harmony, and that was really fun for me because I’ve always thought that the harmony in that song is very subliminal on the record - but it’s there.
“That harmony is one of the key things that most people don’t get when they hear the song; they don’t realise how important it is. But when I sang it with her, we nailed it. And then, we only had one rehearsal, so she knows that song really well. And yeah… it’s fantastic.”
You can judge for yourself below but one thing we will say is that, as a renowned lover of bridges and middle eights, when you look back (now) you can see how much Swift enjoyed belting out the one in Summer of ‘69, which is a classic of the form. Yeah!
