Bryan Adams says making new album ‘So Happy It Hurts’ allowed him to “clear out” his “coat pockets”

Bryan Adams‘ new album So Happy It Hurts, released today, was created during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. But unlike some artists who made records during that time because they didn’t have anything else to do, Bryan says this particular album was always on his “to-do” list.

“I was going to make a record, but once the lockdown kicked in, I just completely immersed myself in it,” Bryan tells ABC Audio. “And it didn’t take very long ’cause I had a fair amount of ideas.”

“I finally got to clear all the pieces of paper out of my coat pockets that had all these things written on them, and put them all on a big board in the studio,” he adds. “And just one by one, [I] went through them to see which ones were working.”

But due to the pandemic, Bryan says he had to do all the recording himself.

“I decided to live my lifelong dream of being a drummer,” he explains. “Every day I would go in and mess around with the songs and put down rough drum tracks. And if in the next morning it didn’t sound great, I would just record it again.”

The album’s sole guest is Monty Python legend John Cleese, who delivers a dramatic yet comedic intro to the song “Kick A**.” Bryan first met Cleese when he photographed him for a charity project, and then unexpectedly ran into him again.

“We were [seated] together at a lunch and I had this song…,” Bryan recalls. “I’d put my voice at the beginning, and I didn’t really like it. So when I was talking to him, I was just noticing how well he spoke. And I said, ‘John, would you be interested in doing the narration for a song?’ And he went, ‘Well, of course!'”