Billboard Canada FYI Bulletin: Bryan Adams Unearths Curiosities, The Junos Wind Back [Opinion Column]

Some 10 months after splitting with long-term manager Bruce Allen, Bryan Adams has quietly continued playing a leisurely series of global concerts in 6-10K capacity arenas. There are all of five he’s booked to headline this month in Europe (and 7 newly announced arena shows in Australia and New Zealand this coming Feb.)

No doubt realizing the appetite for new material has waned, as his shows now zoom in on the two-dozen-plus hits that his classic rock fans pay top dollar to hear the 64-year-old play. Still wearing his trademark jeans and Kirkland crew neck T-shirts, Adams today is mining his rich past, currently with two elaborately boxed sets with complementary DVD/Blu-Ray discs that replicate the three sell-out shows he did in 2022 at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

While mining the past, he’s also unearthed a few curiosities, like his recent version of “War Machine,” originally written with Jim Vallance for Kiss when he was 22 years old and given a new treatment with an anti-war machine CGI video.

Here’s something more vital from his 2022 London sessions.

Oops! The Junos Wind Back Decision

Last week, we reported on the Junos retiring the Christian/Gospel, Children’s, Reggae and International Album of the Year categories and here we are a week later with organizing body CARAS eating crow and reinstating three of the four awards, leaving the International award for now still in the reject bin.

In a post shared on social media, Allan Reid, the president and CEO of the Juno Awards and CARAS, announced that organizers will reinstate three of the four categories.

“Over the course of last year, CARAS underwent an extensive process reviewing all Award categories, taking into consideration data such as consumption, number of submissions, and other metrics,” Reid wrote. “Given the feedback from the community, CARAS will not put these three categories on hiatus this year.”

An official notice detailing all the changes for the 2025 Juno Awards is to be made public on Monday, Sept. 23.

The rather inglorious backpedalling followed a firestorm of pubic criticism detailed here and raises the question of just how the staid executive managed to bungle the original announcement so badly given that CARAS rarely says anything publicly that isn’t dripping with positiveness that sometimes borders on hyperbole.

But CARAS finds itself in a real bind with so many voting categories that have been tacked on to the initial list over time, and a membership that seems unwilling to understand that the more categories the greater the yawn factor is for the show. The awards are sinking from the sheer weight of unrealistic expectations.

We look forward to the penitent academy members’ next decree, but very much doubt that the hard-nosed choices needing to be made to make this show a winner again are forthcoming with sponsors harder to find, production costs increasing and viewership declining.