Do we like Bryan Adams?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record with a real stand for LGBTQ+ rights and animals, and one clumsy 2020 pandemic post he apologised for.
Adams is the Canadian rock singer-songwriter behind decades of arena hits. He's still at it: a long tour and new music are on the books for 2026, and his latest album, Roll With the Punches, came out on his own label. Nothing new and nasty has surfaced lately, which is the nicest kind of news.
The stoush people remember is May 2020. After his Royal Albert Hall shows were cancelled, he posted a rant calling people “greedy bastards” and urging the Chinese to go vegan, and critics called it racist. He deleted it, apologised to anyone offended and said “No excuse, I just wanted to have a rant”, adding that he'd meant to hit animal cruelty at wet markets.
On the harm test, that post is the one real mark we found. Whether you read it as a clumsy vegan rant or as a slur on a whole population depends on your ear, but the key bit is what came after: he took it down, said sorry, and we found nothing similar since. We found no campaigning against any group, no conspiracy rabbit holes and no dodgy company in what we read.
The best case for him is 2016. When Mississippi passed its so-called Religious Liberty bill, Adams cancelled a Biloxi show, said he stood “in solidarity with all my LGBT friends” and wanted the law repealed. That cost him a gig and some grief from commentators, which is the kind of stand that actually counts.
He's also a long-time voice for animals. In 2024 he narrated a PETA video urging the Canadian Armed Forces to drop real-fur bearskin caps, saying “Tell the Canadian government to end the cruelty and go fur-free.” The Department of National Defence said it already uses synthetic fur where possible.
Then there's the charity. The Bryan Adams Foundation, funded largely through his photography, backs schools, children's hospices and orphanages around the world, and he was given the Allan Waters Humanitarian Award at the 2010 Junos. That's real giving, not just a photo-op.