Released 10 years after Adams's debut record, WAKING UP THE NEIGHBORS continues in the hard-rocking tradition of its predecessors, but there are some notable changes. Here, Robert "Mutt" Lange, producer of AC/DC and guiding hand behind a number of other successful hard rock acts, is now Adam's fulltime songwriting partner instead of Jim Vallance, who had co-written all of Adams's early hits. Many of the latter had a touch of heartland melancholy, but these songs are more concerned with the human heart. The love song "Everything I Do (I Do it for You)", featured in the movie ROBIN HOOD, was an enormous hit.
Lange's heavy-metal influence is evident here, with Adams serving up a fine approximation of an AC/DC song on "Hey Honey--I'm Packing You In", while "Thought I'd Died and Gone to Heaven" carries with it the unmistakable flavour of Def Leppard. But in general the emphasis, as always, is on hook-heavy rockers with catchy choruses like "Can't Stop This Thing We Started". Whereas on earlier records Adams had spiced up his songs with traces of social consciousness, this set is back squarely in love-and-lust territory.|

Rovi