!["Many have shared that they've heard it at weddings, featuring a man singing it at the organ. Oh dear! I can’t fathom how that must have sounded": Bryan Adams and the iconic ballad that took over the world.]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Many-have-shared-that-theyve-heard-it-at-weddings-featuring-758x426.jpg "\"Many have shared that they've heard it at weddings, featuring a man singing it at the organ. Oh dear! I can’t fathom how that must have sounded\": Bryan Adams and the iconic ballad that took over the world.] 1")
It was combination that couldn’t fail – Bryan Adams, the radio-friendly rock singer, and Mutt Lange, the producer with the Midas touch.
The result of their collaboration in the early ’90s was one of the best-selling singles of all time.
Everything I Do (I Do It For You) sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and topped the charts in 19 countries.
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In the US it held the top spot for seven weeks, and on the other side of the Atlantic it set the record for the longest uninterrupted run for a UK No 1 – an astonishing 16 weeks.
But none of this would have happened if Adams had stuck with his initial choice of producer for the album Waking Up The Neighbours.
He began recording that album in 1988 with Steve Lillywhite in the producer’s chair. Lillywhite had a hugely impressive track record working with major acts including U2, Simple Minds, Peter Gabriel, Joan Armatrading, The Psychedelic Furs and The Rolling Stones. But he and Adams didn’t gel, and the sessions were scrapped.
At that point, Adams turned to a familiar face. Bob Clearmountain had co-produced Adams’s four previous albums, including the massively successful Reckless (1984) and the follow-up Into The Fire (1987). But new recordings with Clearmountain also came to nothing.
Eventually, Adams decided on radical change.
In 1989 he dispensed with his trusted songwriting partner Jim Vallance, with whom he had written all of his hit songs, from 1983 breakthrough Cuts Like A Knife to all the big numbers from Reckless – Summer Of ’69, Run To You, Heaven, Somebody and the duet with Tina Turner, It’s Only Love.
Also in 1989, Adams hooked up with Mutt Lange, producer of multi-platinum albums for AC/DC, Def Leppard and Foreigner.
Lange was also an accomplished songwriter with credits on Def Leppard hits including Pour Some Sugar On Me, Animal, Love Bites, Photograph, Foolin’ and Rock Of Ages.
All 15 tracks featured on Waking Up The Neighbours were co-written by Adams with Lange, while four tracks had a co-writer’s credit for Vallance.
In a 1992 interview with Vox magazine, Adams discussed how he and Lange worked together.
“Mutt is incredibly committed,” Adams said. “I’ve never met anyone like it in my life. He really is an all-encompassing producer – he writes, arranges, sings, plays.
“There were times when we were working around three in the morning, and I’d go, ‘Look, I can’t sit here any longer.’ And he’d say, ‘Okay, man, see you later!’ So I’d go off to bed, wake up around 10 or 11am, go back to the studio and he’d still be there. And not only had he not gone to sleep, he’d also sussed our the problem we’d had the night before!”
He added: “Mutt’s a lovely guy. I’ve got nothing but fantastic things to say about him. He really pulled me out of a rut. I’ll be forever indebted to him.
“Mutt has his own identifiable sound. I instinctively don’t like the big background vocal thing, but I didn’t complain because I felt, ‘Well, I’m committed to making a record with him, and that’s how it will be.’”
Adams told Vox that Everything I Do (I Do It For You) was among the last three songs that he and Lange wrote for the album, along with Vanishing and Hey Honey – I’m Packin’ You In!
“I think by the time we’d worked together for a year and a half, we understood each other a lot more,” he said. “The last three songs we wrote almost showed another focus for the album.
“With those songs, Mutt understood my voice much more. He understood that he didn’t have to spend hours and hours trying to get me to sing in a certain way – because I sing in a certain way already.”
In places, the sound of Waking Up The Neighbours carried echoes of Lange’s work with Def Leppard. This was especially evident in the songs Touch The Hand and House Arrest.
These similarities were not lost on Leppard’s singer Joe Elliott, who commented on Waking Up The Neighbours in a 1992 interview with Kerrang!
“It’s a great record,” Elliott said, “but you can hear Bryan and Mutt tugging over it. And without trying to piss him off, Bryan’s album sounds like a Def Leppard album with Bryan Adams singing it.”
Speaking to Vox, Adams said that Elliott had since contacted Lange to clear the air.
“Joe Elliott phoned up Mutt and apologised,” Adams revealed. “He said he didn’t mean the things he said in that interview. He was really worried what I was going to think.”
Adams stated: “With Waking Up The Neighbours I took my own advice, which is: kids wanna rock!”
But the biggest song on the album – the biggest song of his whole career – was of course that epic power ballad.
When Vox suggested there was a touch of Vegas about Everything I Do (I Do It For You), he countered with a laugh: “When I think of Vegas I think of a plump Elvis sweating and throwing handkerchiefs into the crowd. I can’t imagine that to the melody of Everything I Do… or maybe I can!”
He continued: “Elton John has a reputation as a balladeer, but he definitely has his ‘up’ moments. The Elton show I saw was Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and it’s the best I’ve ever seen. He has these huge ballads – and rockers that are just as huge. Even Metallica’s biggest song off their album is a ballad. And the Scorpions…”
But Bryan Adams’s ballad was the biggest of them all.
Everything I Do (I Do It For You) was written for the movie Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, and based on the movie’s love theme Maid Marian, composed by Michael Kamen.
Adams recalled that he and Lange wrote the song in just 45 minutes. Michael Kamen also received a writer’s credit.
The song was recorded in March 1991 and released as a single three months later.
It became so enormously popular that it was pretty much inescapable. And inevitably it became the soundtrack to countless marriage ceremonies.
As Adams told Vox: “People have told me they’ve heard it at weddings – with a guy singing it at the organ.”
He added with a groan: “Oh God! I can’t imagine what that was like!”
