Bryan Adams says his new album is ‘a love letter to Canada’ with nods to Terry Fox and the CN Tower - Toronto Star

'How's It Goin',' which he's releasing on his own indie label, also features songs about Newfoundland rum and the Bruce Peninsula.

Bryan Adams performs at Tinderbox music festival in Denmark in June 2024.

Bryan Adams says he wants his new album, “How’s It Goin’,” to be something to discover.

“And in the same way,” he told the Star, “it was a discovery process for me. I think I learned a lot from this record, not only musically, but about Canada. I did my homework.”

That process also included getting his elbows up.

While President Donald J. Trump and his minions were accusing Canada of exerting undue influence over the U.S. midterms well before the elections even happened, Adams would appear more than willing to accept his part in the results.

While never explicitly naming the name that the possessor of that name seeks to plaster in gold over whatever random structure — or even oceans, lately — is within his reach, the typically apolitical Adams has done a pretty good job of rubbing the Maple Leaf in Trump’s face over the past few months.

On Canada Day, the Kingston-born, often Vancouver-based but forever globe-trotting pop hitmaker issued the single “51st State,” which lamented that the 49th parallel had suddenly become “a line drawn in the sand” and offered the current expansionist leader of the free world the curt warning, “So let me give you some advice, mister / You might have too much on your plate / Go on, load us up with tariffs / But we’ll never be the 51st state.” Albeit with the typically polite and Canadian caveat that the president’s still “welcome ’cross the border.”

Last week, Adams doubled down with the anthemic “Lake Ontario,” a rabble-rousing riposte to Trump’s recent decision to rename that particular body of water “Lake America.” Written in the heat of the moment, it was too late to make the vinyl pressing of his new album, which Adams describes as “love letter to Canada” that arrives in stores and online Friday.

“The ‘Lake of Shining Waters’ is what the Iroquois called her / It’s a First Nations name, not an executive order,” he sings, before adding, “But it feels like another distraction / While the Epstein files were getting traction.”

That’s some unusually pointed social commentary from a singer best known for feel-good bangers such as “Summer of ’69” and “Kids Wanna Rock” and prom-melting power ballads like “Heaven” and “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You.” But Adams, now a youthful 66 and at the helm of his own independent BAD Records label, is well past caring what anyone else thinks.

“If he can say it, then I can certainly say something, too,” Adams told the Star from his Warehouse Studio in Vancouver the day before “Lake Ontario” was released.

Bryan Adams performs in Toronto on June 10, 2026, during a concert ahead of the World Cup.

“I’m not afraid to speak my mind. If there are people down there who can say things as stupid as ‘Let’s make Canada the 51st state,’ then — you know what? — I think I can say something back.

“It came a bit later so we missed the vinyl inclusion, and in order to get the record out for November, I had to crack on. But I had the song and I thought, ‘I’m gonna finish this one,’ so we decided to just put it on (as a digital bonus track).”

When he performed a series of acoustic shows recently in the U.K., he played the song. “And you should have heard the crowd,” he said. “Oh, dear.”

“How’s It Goin’” on the whole finds Bryan Adams catching the pugilistic present-day Canadian zeitgeist in rather fun and spontaneous fashion, even if it all kind of happened by accident.

Commissioned to write the title track to the Atlantic-focused documentary series “Canada’s Wild Eastern Edge,” the peripatetic singer-songwriter found himself immersed in Canadiana in a most scholarly fashion. Songs like “When Canada Joined Newfoundland,” “The Ballad of Terry Fox” and “The Battle of Lundy’s Lane” started bubbling up in his mind and he kept writing — and researching to get the details right — until “How’s It Goin’” was born.

“It just got going, and then the train started rolling and all these ideas started coming to me,” he said. “At the time, I was in Africa on tour so most of it got written there, and then as I would travel, I would update lyrics.

Bryan Adams has released “How’s It Goin’” on his own BAD Records label. 

“I’d be in my hotel room in the daytime, just writing, and then I’d go off to do sound check and the gig and come straight back and start working again. So it all happened really quickly. The whole album was written and recorded within three months.”

At a time when being Canadian is viewed by some south of the border as a political act, Adams found himself becoming unintentionally political at a time when he was really just having fun re-embracing his roots.

Often folky and foot-stompin’, “How’s It Goin’” revels in its invocations of the Bruce Peninsula, the Quebecois “salut,” the Capilano Bridge, the Chilkoot Pass, the CN Tower and Newfoundland Screech rum in a manner that would make such late chroniclers of the Canadian landscape as Gordon Lightfoot and Gord Downie proud.

At times it feels a bit like a textbook or a travelogue set to song, but Adams is all right with that. If you feel like you’ve learned something about Canada while listening, well, he learned a few things about Canada while writing.

“Even until the very last day that we were making the record,” he said. “I was changing stuff — fact-checking everything, making sure I’d got the right story.”

He recently met with Terry Fox’s brother Darrell, who told him, “I just want to say thanks for mentioning Manitoba.”

“Well, I studied up,” Adams told him. “And he said, ‘Obviously you did, because no one talks about that.’ Because Terry was born in Manitoba and brought up in B.C.” 

Adams says it made him feel good to write this record. “I think a lot of people will learn something from this,” he said, “and perhaps it will tempt them to explore, to learn more about this incredible place.” 

Also a professional photographer, Adams shot the promotional photos for his new album.

The artist already has enough songs for a sequel to “How’s It Goin’,” so regardless of what happens in the U.S. in the weeks and months to come, he might yet have even more fond Canadiana to fire from the cannon. 

He’s on the road until the end of next summer on his endless Roll with the Punches world tour, but as one of the most successful — and consistently excellent — mainstream pop artists of his generation, it’s not like he has any obligations to anyone but himself. 

“I’m kind of on my own now,” he said. “All the guys I used to work with pretty much don’t write anymore and have more or less retired, so I’m just writing for myself now. It’s just a different time in my life and different things are happening. It feels very natural. And I’m really having some of the best times of my life right now.

“I don’t have a manager,” he continued. “I don’t have a tour manager. I do it all within the confines of the people I know and love who’ve been around and been loyal to me. So it’s been an amazing, independent ride over the last few years and I can’t see it stopping.”

Still, Adams says he has no illusions that the album is going to get him back on the charts. “I don’t really care,” he said. “I make records because I like doing it … It’s such a creative time. Long may it last.”

“I got into this world because it was fun and I never want to lose that feeling. I want it to be fun.” 

Ben Rayner is a Toronto-based journalist and a frequent contributor to the Star’s Culture section. Follow him on Twitter: @ihatebenrayner.