Happy birthday, Bryan and Ryan (Adams)!

Have you ever gotten confused between Bryan and Ryan Adams? They may not play the same kind of music — or be the newest artists at that — but they do have something else in common beside most of their names...

Today is a big day. Granted, it’s the day ABBA release their first album of new material in over 40 years, but we already talked about that before, so we figured it would be best to not push it. Today is also Art Garfunkel‘s 80th birthday, the better half of Simon & Garfunkel as one would call him to piss off Paul Simon, and very good on him for that! Same goes with 30-year old Australian DJ Flume, who has quite a few things to look forward to. But there’s another interesting musical birthday to celebrate today, or rather two: both Bryan and Ryan Adams were born on November 5th, albeit 16 years apart…

The names may be extremely similar but the men behind those names are admittedly less so. Bryan Adams was born in 1959 in Kingston, Ontario (Canada), first getting noticed as a 1980’s radio-friendly rocker with tunes like the very catchy “Summer of ’69”, before becoming a global mainstay in the early 1990’s with ballads including “Please Forgive Me” and “All For Love”, the latter being part of The Three Musketeers movie soundtrack. While that film has very much come and gone, the song remains a soft-radio radio favorite to this day. Looking back, (Bryan) Adams may not look like the coolest rockstar like, say, The Boss, nor the grittiest one like, say, fellow Canadian Neil Young, but he does stand at the forefront of pop/rock musical history of the past 3 decades and that’s saying something.

Meanwhile, Ryan Adams had a somewhat different path. Born in 1974 in Jacksonville, North Carolina (USA), the budding musician (and poet) went for a decidedly more alternative route. With a distinct folk and occasionally even country aspect to it: his debut album, the celebrated 2000 Heartbreaker, featured “Oh My Sweet Carolina”, a song on which the great Emmylou Harris happened to be singing backup. His subsequent work is quite varied too, from the more straightforwardly rock Cardinals project, which he formed a (successful) while, to pop-folk fare including sophomore album Gold‘s “New York, New York”. In other words, while Bryan Adams went from radio rock to mainstream pop-rock, Ryan Adams touched on a variety of styles through his incredibly prolific output, but seemingly never quite aiming for the same kind of global appeal.

Consequently, very few people do confuse Bryan Adams and Ryan Adams, despite the fact that both musicians were born in North America, create pop-rock music that (occasionally) plays on the radio and… were born on the same day. Ryan has been seen playing covers of his older namesake on stage, but never in studio. A duet could be fun, couldn’t it? With a November 5th release date? Let’s go!