28 November 1993
If your favourite part of ‘Everything I Do (I Do It For You)’ was the droning, dreary middle section, have I got another Bryan Adams song for you! But wait: what has our Bryan done to you that he has to ask you to “Please forgive me” here? Left the toilet seat up? Hit onto your bridesmaid at your own wedding? Called your visiting parents the ‘2 horsefaces of d apocalypse FFS :(‘ in the family WhatsApp? Relax: it’s nothing as serious or realistic as that. He just begs pardon for loving you “a little more than I should”, all because he “can’t stop loving you”. Oh, for God’s sake.
‘Please Forgive Me’ is, with a little less synth and a little more gravel, just a hoarser ’90s version of those angsty, blokey, contrived soft rock ballads we saw at number one in the ’80s, like Chicago’s ‘Hard To Say I’m Sorry’, Foreigner’s ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’ and—yes I’m going there again—U2’s ‘All I Want Is You’. If you find yourself drawn to this maudlin slush, or God forbid have paid money for it, perhaps music just isn’t the thing for you.
