Music Review: Tracks Of My Years

Album: Tracks Of My Years
Music: Bryan Adams, Universal
Rating: 3.5
Pop/Rock: It’s hard to imagine that the same Bryan Adams who sang Please Forgive Me and the done-to-death Summer Of 69 also, at one point in his career, did a cover of Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay, Any Time At All by The Beatles and Smokey Robinson’s The Tracks Of My Tears.
So, as the album cover suggests, here’s a more youthful Adams who wore his hair long and wouldn’t look out of place when placed alongside Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin.The familiar raspy vocals, however, are very much in place. Apart from the above-mentioned tracks, Chuck Berry’s Rock And Roll Music and Ray Charles’ I Can’t Stop Loving You also get a workout here, Canadian rocker style. Adams injects vim and vigour into the songs with the same familiar spirit that he would sing about many years later in 18 Til I Die.
So, among the 16 tracks on this record, Lay Lady Lay, which is a mellow take, the CD’s sole original called She Knows Me which is upbeat and joyously sung and God Only Knows by the Beach Boys are standout tracks by far. Perhaps knowing that he could never match the brilliance of the originals, he takes a stripped-down approach that plays to his vocal strengths. An endearing album, you’ll almost wish he did more in the same vein.