Heaven

The first time you listen to Heaven by Bryan Adams, what grabs you isn’t just the catchy melody, but that moment when the voice soars over the chorus and the rhythm becomes almost hypnotic. It’s not just any ballad: it has that mix of contained energy and emotion that makes it sound bigger than many of its time. The detail many overlook is that, although it sounds like a classic melodic rock track, it actually came from an unexpected crossroads. Adams and his collaborator Jim Vallance wrote it while the former was opening for Journey on their Frontiers Tour in 1983, and the band’s influence — especially from Faithfully — is clear in the structure and the epic air that surrounds the song.

The recording itself was a pivotal moment. Adams and his team worked at Power Station in New York on June 6 and 7, 1983, but it nearly didn’t get finished. Mid-session, the drummer Mickey Curry — who had already warned he had a prior commitment with Hall & Oates — had to leave. Luck intervened when Journey’s drummer, Steve Smith, happened to be in town and agreed to fill in. That unexpected twist gave the song a rhythmic push that ended up defining its sound. Though Adams and his producer Jimmy Iovine initially thought it was too “light” for the Reckless album, they eventually included it. The result was a success that took time to arrive: after appearing in the soundtrack of A Night in Heaven in 1983, the track was released as a single in April 1985 and, by June of that year, it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. In Canada, it also earned gold certification that same year. Yet the oddest part is that, although today it’s remembered as one of the most iconic ballads of the ’80s, at the time it wasn’t so obvious: Adams himself doubted including it on Reckless until the very last moment.