Another Helping Of Housewife Rock
The cover of Room Service shows Bryan Adams, leaning on a Fender Stratocaster with the words ‘Room Service’ and ‘These Are Crazy Days’ written upon it. Perhaps the best part of six years on the road inspired and existed around the creation of this album, but one can’t help but wonder just how crazy these days are. Bryan Adams’ sound is of a style that I like to call housewife rock. It is an inoffensive, interchangeable pop-rock sound, overlaid with Adams’ gravelly voice. It is the kind of ‘rock’ music that a housewife will listen to; Adams is a massive international rock star, but is apparently down to earth, and you know he’s not going to sing to you about drugs and promiscuous sex. Oh no, Bryan Adams’ crazy days are of the same order as those encountered by real people leading real lives; at least, this is the image that seems to exist around Bryan Adams. It is for these reasons that housewives all over the world allow themselves to secretly fall in love with such a ‘crazy’ rocker like Bryan. He’s a rockstar who one could imagine would be great with the kids, even though they aren’t his. Bryan Adams is the peoples’ rockstar.
Bryan Adams’ sandpaper vocals have found themselves singing both anthemic rock songs, the likes of ‘Summer Of ‘69’, and powerful pop-rock ballads, the likes of ‘Everything I Do, I Do It For You’. Some people prefer the rock, others prefer the ballads, some prefer neither. Room Service is, in the majority, built of the rockier type of song, but the crafty Canadian has hidden a few of his hopelessly romantic ballads among the more up-tempo pieces, just to keep the housewives happy; ‘Flying’ and ‘Why Do You Have To Be So Hard To Love’ being prime examples of these. If I were brutally honest, I’d have to say that despite the inoffensive likeability of Bryan Adams’ pop-rock, this album is nothing special; a couple of tracks stand out as being most memorable or possible single material, but in the main part, this is Bryan Adams doing nothing more than precisely what he has been doing for the previous twenty-five years.
‘East Side Story’ starts the album with swirling guitars and Adams’ strikingly masculine rasp before one of the strongest songs on the album develops. Unfortunately, it’s mostly downhill from here. ‘This Side Of Paradise’ is a standard Bryan Adams pop-rock tune, standard percussion, standard guitars, standard vocals. This is my main complaint against Room Service, nothing grabs you by the ears and gives you a reason to press ‘play’ a second time. ‘Not Romeo Not Juliet’ is better, it manages to bridge the gap between the rock and the ballad and at least make some sort of impression in my mind. The percussion is most prominent, below the vocals, a feature that promotes the ‘rock’ sound in what is primarily a pop song.
‘Flying’ is the first of the slow songs, and the longest on the album, at a little over four minutes. The melody is typically Bryan Adams, the instrumentation makes use of a variety of sounds, some distinguishable, some simply sounds. This is liable to be the housewives’ favourite. To ensure the rock fans out there don’t switch off, track five ‘She’s A Little Too Good For Me’ returns to the pace of the earlier tracks. The lyrical content of this song just seems a little too teenage to be entirely credible, but the song is a gem- quite possibly the best on the album.
The next two tracks, ‘Open Road’ and ‘Room Service’ fail to live up to ‘She’s A Little Too Good For Me’, and fail to create any sympathy for ‘poor’ Bryan Adams, always on the road; except maybe from the adoring housewives. For a title track, ‘Room Service’, is just a good name, the song is nothing above average. ‘I Was Only Dreamin’’ slows down again, and despite some interesting string arrangements, remains wholly uninspiring. ‘Right Back Where I Started From’ brings the average quality of songs up a notch with its blues-rock lead guitar adding a level to the song missing from previous tracks. Unfortunately ‘Nowhere Fast’ is indeed going nowhere fast, it is a return to the vocal and percussion led pop-rock that must appeal to somebody somewhere. The album draws to a close with a track designed for the ears of romantic housewives who read too many Mills & Boon novels. ‘Why Do You Have To Be So Hard To Love’ is, in my opinion, a better ballad than ‘Flying’, making better use of the instruments available and of dynamic variety missing from the rest of the album.