"Heat of the Night" by Bryan Adams

Top 10 Alert!

Song#:  3076
Date:  03/28/1987
Debut:  54
Peak:  6
Weeks:  16
Genre:  Rock



Pop Bits:  Adams' fourth album, Reckless, was a major hit reaching #1 and spawning three Top 10 singles along with three other Top 20s. It would eventually sell over five million copies in the US alone. After everything for the album was wrapped up, Adams and his writing partner Jim Vallance went back into the studio to start on a follow-up. They collaborated on all ten tracks that made up Adams' fifth effort Into the Fire. This first single got things kicked off and it did well reaching #2 at Rock while becoming his fifth Pop Top 10. The hit would help the LP reach #7. Adams was very lucky with Reckless in that it had long legs with six singles doing well. Only time would tell if Into the Fire had similar legs. (Spoiler alert - it didn't.)

ReduxReview:  I liked Adams and enjoyed Restless, so I was looking forward to the new album. Unfortunately, my interest in Adams quickly faded when this song came out. It wasn't in the same commercial-friendly rock league as his hits from Restless. It wasn't as catchy or memorable either. I didn't connect with it and was quite surprised it made the Pop Top 10. I'm sure his popularity at the time helped it along. I appreciated that Adams was trying to stretch beyond the walls of radio ready rock, but he needed something far stronger than this to maintain the audience he gained with Restless.

ReduxRating:  5/10

Trivia:  Cassettes of albums had been around for a long while, but at the beginning of the 80s, vinyl was still king. That applied to singles as well, but in 1982, IRS Records thought that with the market for cassettes growing, that a cassette version of a single might be of interest. They called their version a "cassingle" and pushed out the first commercially available product in the US in 1982 with The Go-Go's hit "Vacation." The format didn't take off. RCA gave it a whirl too, but it seemed buyers were not ready for a cassette single. As the 80s wore on, the demand for vinyl singles was quickly tanking. Sony's mini cassette player, the Walkman, quickly became the go-to item for playing music and cassette album sales began to boom. As 1987 came along, the record companies decided to get together and see if the cassette single would now be a more viable product, especially with the demise of the vinyl single. The first cassette single released in this renewed effort was this Bryan Adams song. Others would follow and the market responded favorably. While cassette singles would never attain the same level of sales that vinyl singles previously had, they remained popular throughout the remainder of the 80s and into the 90s. But like other formats, they would be phased out, along with cassette albums, with the advent of CDs.

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