Bryan Adams’ ‘Heaven’ Joins The Spotify Billions Club
The singer’s 1983 power ballad has entered the pantheon of Spotify’s biggest hits.
Bryan Adams just doubled his tracks in the Spotify Billions Club. The rock singer-songwriter’s 1983 power ballad “Heaven” has racked up more than a billion streams on Spotify. “Heaven” joins “Summer Of ‘69,” Adams’ previous Billions Club entry.
“Heaven” is one of the most iconic ballads of the 1980s. Adams and songwriting partner Jim Vallance wrote the song for the 1983 movie A Night In Heaven, pulling influence from Journey, with whom Adams was touring at the time. As it turned out, Journey drummer Steve Smith played on the song because Adams’ usual drummer Mickey Curry was not available that day.
Though it gained some radio airplay when the movie came out despite not being officially released as a single, “Heaven” later appeared on Adams’ 1985 album Reckless, the same release that spawned “Summer Of ‘69.” Adams and producer Jimmy Iovine initially believed “Heaven” was not a fit for the more hard-rocking Reckless, but Adams wisely decided to include it on the tracklist at the last minute, which led to its eventual breakout.
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In 1985, a year and a half after its initial release, Adams made “Heaven” a single off of Reckless. It shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the first of his four U.S. chart-toppers. Incidentally, all four of those No. 1 hits were from movie soundtracks. The others include 1991’s “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” from Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, 1993’s Rod Stewart and Sting collab “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers, and 1995’s “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” from Don Juan Demarco.
Not many songs better capture the extreme romantic essence of the 1980s power ballad than “Heaven.” All Music Guide’s Stewart Mason once summed up the song’s appeal, calling it “the power ballad that transcends the inherent cheesiness of the style to become a genuinely effective single.”
