Power pop star and alleged showstopper Bryan Adams has not had the best of musical luck in recent years. The Summer of ‘69 hitmaker has found it harder still to adapt his brand of rock and roll to the modern day. At a time when messages of deep and personal experience are woven so charmingly, so naturally, into the progression of chord structures and instrumental risk-taking, it feels almost ridiculous to head back towards Adams’ work. He has offered the same tone and pattern time and again, and recent single Make Up Your Mind is another slump of a release. He asks his listeners, and himself, to make up their minds. What over, that much is irrelevant, as is the song itself, as Adams once more fails to break the aged, static mold he made decades ago and has been stuck in ever since.
Music as escapism can still have ties to the real world. Adams is certainly trying to blur both, but with little success. His paint-by-numbers song experience uses just one colour, and it paints the world as a slightly optimistic place where hope perseveres. His disconnection from the real world, a lack of interest in commenting on one struggle or another, is what makes him such an uninteresting artist. Adams has failed to connect with his listeners on a multitude of levels here. Make Up Your Mind is the cheap nostalgia slop for those who cannot face the real world. But in shying away from the present, Adams misses out on the chance to experience euphoria or misery. It means his radio rock, the adult contemporary slop he pumps out occasionally, is reliant on the suggestion of wins and losses rather than the experience of one or the other. For a song demanding people make up their minds, Make Up Your Mind is absent of choice.
Make Up Your Mind never veers from the middle of the road that Adams has driven down his whole career. Music for those who want to bury their head in the sand not to escape the real world or their own problems, but the chance of experience. It is sound for those without imagination. Adams once again showcases the outline of a story but refuses to fill in the details for fear we may have questions after the end of the song. The only question for Make Up Your Mind hangs over its purpose. Soulless rock which has the smiles of familiar faces as the main purpose, rather than what event or incident has gauged the response. These are the fundamental shortcomings most acts have wheedled out before they hit the stage for the first time. But not Adams.
A unique breed of songwriter, a musician whose purpose on stage feels completely expired and shrouded in mystery. Make Up Your Mind has some horribly plain lyrical tones to it, but it is backed by an equally lame piece of guitar work, inevitably giving way to those percussion pieces which try and give the song a stronger backbone. It fails. You cannot offer a hand of optimism without the pessimism as context. Good friends and great stories are only as good as their detail. When absent and filled with the sameness of the other guitar rock of the last decade, the cheesy, radio-friendly grin, not even a solid voice can salvage it. Adams can still sing, he can still cause a stir with his riffs, as can his band in an arena setting. But his music, where it may fill the room, leaves the heart and head empty.
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