Bryan Adams was nine years old in 1969. He did not buy his first guitar, form a band, or spend evenings at the drive-in with a girlfriend that summer, and he has spent forty years telling people the title is not a date.
Here is what he says it means, why his co-writer disagrees, and what the song was almost called.
The Short Answer
Adams says it is not the year. He has stated publicly, on television in 2008 and later to The Sunday Times, that a lot of people assume it refers to 1969, and that it is really about making love in the summertime, with the number used as a sexual reference. His co-writer Jim Vallance describes it as a straightforward nostalgia song about a remembered summer. Both men worked on the same lyric and have never agreed about it.
The Story Behind the Song
Adams and Vallance wrote it in January 1984 in Vallance’s basement studio in Vancouver. The two had been working together since 1978.
Its working title was “Best Days of My Life,” and in the first draft the phrase that became the title appeared only once. By the final version it had been moved into the title and still appears only a handful of times.
Neither of them was convinced it belonged on the album. They recorded it several times over a few weeks, starting from a twelve-string riff, before it took shape.
It went onto Reckless, released 5 November 1984, produced by Adams and Bob Clearmountain, with Keith Scott on lead guitar. It was the fourth of six singles from the album, all six of which reached the American top fifteen, and it peaked at number five on the Hot 100.
Why does the arithmetic not work?
Because Adams was born in 1959. A boy of nine or ten does not buy his first six-string, start a band with schoolfriends, watch the group fall apart, and stand on a girlfriend’s porch being told she will wait forever.
Every biographical detail in the song belongs to a teenager. Set in 1969 with Adams as the narrator, it describes events that could not have happened, which is the strongest argument for his own explanation of the title.
What does Adams actually say?
That the number is an innuendo. He has said he considered calling it “Best Days of My Life” but felt that mentioning sixty-nine was more provocative.
His account is consistent across interviews: people think it is about the year, he was a child in the year, and the song is about summer and sex rather than a calendar. He has also encouraged listeners to work it out for themselves, which has kept the argument running.
What does Vallance say?
Something plainer. Vallance has described the song as being about looking back, and has suggested Adams was playing around with year numbers while developing the lyric rather than making a joke.
His memory of the session is affectionate. He has said it was the two of them at their best, that in January 1984 they had not yet had real success and were writing for the love of it, with nothing to prove and less to lose, and that things started to unravel after Reckless.
There is no way to settle it. A songwriter can put a double meaning into a title without telling the person in the room with him, and a co-writer can spend a month on a lyric without ever being told.
Does the double meaning change the song?
Barely, which is the interesting part. Almost nobody hears the innuendo unprompted, because everything else in the lyric is about first guitars, garage bands, summer jobs and a relationship that did not last.
The song functions as nostalgia whatever the title means, and it functions for people who were not alive in 1969 at all. The specific year is doing less work than the word summer.
Why does the nostalgia work on everyone?
Because the details are generic on purpose. A first instrument bought cheaply, fingers that hurt, friends who quit, a porch, a promise that was not kept.
None of it is tied to a place or a scene. Adams and Vallance stripped out anything that would date the memory, which is why a Canadian song about a fictional summer became a fixed part of American radio.
How is it regarded now?
As one of the most reliable songs in the catalogue, and as a burden for at least one other person. Reckless sold more than twelve million copies and remains Adams’ biggest album.
The singer Ryan Adams spent years being mistaken for Bryan Adams and having this song requested at his shows. After one heckler kept calling for it, he handed the man money and asked him to leave.
Why it lasted
Because it is about the gap between a remembered summer and the person remembering it, and that gap widens for every listener over time.
The title argument is a footnote. The song was never really about a specific year, whichever of its two writers you believe.
Songs whose titles look like dates are easy to misfile and hard to search for; when that is the problem, our song lyrics search sorts it out.