"Now in his mid-60s, there's still something oddly teenage about Bryan Adams": Soft rock's Mr Nice Guy returns to familiar ground

There’s a secret strength to never having been cool. And, bless his heart, even at the absolute peak of his rock’n’roll powers in the 80s and early 90s, Bryan Adams was never cool. Even when he trapped the whole of the UK in a weird Stockholm syndrome situation at the top of the singles chart with (Everything I Do) I Do It For You for what felt like the length of a Game Of Thrones winter, it wasn’t because he was cool.

There was always something too wholesome about him for that. He was very much the auntie’s favourite. None of this is really much of a criticism, because Bryan Adams knows exactly who he is, and it’s given him a longevity that some of his edgier peers, with the benefit of hindsight, would kill for

Bryan Adams - Will We Ever Be Friends Again - YouTube

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Roll With The Punches is his sixteenth album and the first on his own label, and he’s been churning them out at an astonishingly reliable rate since 1980. He may be an undisputed cheesemonger, but he’s a hell of a successful one.

All of his more camembert-fragranced hallmarks remain. From the opening title track, with its nod to Proud Mary, the rhymes are cheerfully, clangingly, unapologetically obvious: ‘Sometimes life can hit you hard, might even leave you scarred’; ‘Take it on the chin, might lose before you win’; ‘Sometimes you need to fight, and stand up for what you think is right.’ He does that thing soft rockers of his vintage always do, where he yells the title – ‘You’ve got to roll with the punches!’ – and punctuates it with a fist-pumping “Yeah!”

Bryan Adams - A Little More Understanding - YouTube

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There are bluesy breakdowns and, in Two Arms To Hold You, the mandatory erection-section romantic waltz. There’s a sweet, cards-on-the-table, pro-choice, anti-war message in the gentle, squishy ballad Life Is Beautiful, and a Bon Jovi-esque portrait of a soldier writing home in the peacenik, harmonica-flecked Love Is Stronger Than Hate. Most surprisingly, Never Ever Let You Go suggests he’s been listening to some of the HIM back catalogue, taking notes, and cleaning it up for his own audience.

For a man now bang into his mid-60s, there’s still something oddly teenage about Bryan Adams – for much of Roll With The Punches he sounds like he’s in his first flush of love, even when he’s looking over his shoulder to the past as he is on the windswept, airbrushed nostalgia-fest Will We Ever Be Friends Again?. Which is probably why, even as civilisations rise and fall, he’ll still be out there with his soft-rock anthems, defiantly sticking to his guns on the easily accessible AOR path he’s spent so long carving for himself.