“Summer of '69” by Bryan Adams

"Summer of '69" is Bryan Adams looking back through a rear-view mirror on his 1984 album Reckless, his fourth, and in 1985 A&M sent it out as the album's fourth single. Adams wrote it with his longtime partner Jim Vallance, and he produced it with Bob Clearmountain, who also engineered and mixed it.

It's built on a guitar riff you can recognize from the first few notes, with Adams and Keith Scott on guitars, Dave Taylor on bass, Pat Steward on drums and Vallance adding percussion. The song looks back on long summer days and young love, drawing on the culture of the 1960s and on the bands Adams and Vallance played in when they were starting out. Adams sings it in a raspy, full-throated rush, heartland rock with the windows down.

Critics at the time liked the energy and heard plenty of Bruce Springsteen in it, though a few doubted how genuine all that nostalgia really was. It reached five on the Hot 100. Steve Barron's video cut between a color present and black-and-white flashbacks and earned a Best Male Video nomination at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards. It has stayed a fixture of Adams' live shows, Live Aid included.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.