When I started doing this section a good while back now I named it thus because it seemed to me that sometimes partnerships, teamups, collaborations, call them what you will, seem either inappropriate or unnecessary, and this is certainly the case with the next one I want to look at. With a massive hit album already in the charts and five previous singles, some of which had done really well under his belt, I can't see why Bryan Adams felt it necessary to record a duet with Tina Turner. I know he admired her, sure, but the age gap was pretty big for them to be singing a love song. I mean, Turner was more than twice his age at the time this was recorded, and both were kind of hitting the high point of their careers at about the same time. "Reckless" had made Adams a household name in 1984 and would spur him on to a number one single seven years later, while Turner had come back from the musical wilderness with the triumphant "Private dancer" in the same year. The two were not poles apart in musical style, it has to be said, but Tina Turner was more the blues-singer-turned-pop-singer while Bryan Adams was pretty much straight ahead rock, at least at this point in his career. Each was doing very well on their own, neither needed to hang on to the coat-tails of the other, yet they decided, at the peak of both their careers, to record a duet.
Bryan Adams and Tina Turner --- It's only love
It's certainly not even a great song, one of the weaker tracks for me on the "Reckless" album, but nevertheless it climbed into the top thirty in the UK and did even better in the USA, possibly on the back on Tina Turner's name, though that's by no means certain. Written, as are most of Adams' hits, by himself and Jim Vallance, it's a rocky number, with some good snarling guitar and there's no question that the two singers do a fine job, but the idea of Bryan Adams singing about love to someone who could conceivably be his mother is just a little unsettling. Had he gone for someone more in his own age range I don't think it would have sounded so off-putting, but there's definitely something sleazy about this, and not in a good way.
The two aren't connected, they never recorded (to my knowledge anyway) any further material together, but of course at the time neither could do any wrong, especially Adams whose brand of young, brash, in-your-face rock was only really matched by the likes of Bon Jovi and maybe John Farnham. So people bought the record, and "Reckless" staged a Canadian assault on the Billboard Hot 100, making it right to the top, something an artist from Canada had seldom managed. But I just personally don't get it. Maybe you could look at it as a mother giving her son advice about love, but that just doesn't work for me. Tina Turner and Bryan Adams? If any sort of a marriage, you would have to think that's one made in Hell!