Bryan Adams — Cuts Like A Knife

JUL 01 1983 · 12:00

Bryan Adams — Cuts Like A Knife (1983) Director: Steve Barron Era: Early MTV Era (1983) - The nascent period of music television in which performance-driven clips with minimal budget were standard, and the medium itself was still defining its visual grammar as a promotional and cultural tool. High archival significance. This video sits at the intersection of three major cultural vectors: the commercial launch of Bryan Adams as an international artist, the early institutionalization of MTV as a music industry promotional machine, and Steve Barron's formative creative period immediately preceding his most celebrated work. The drained swimming pool location is a documented and distinctive production detail, and the video represents a clean, well-preserved specimen of 35mm-shot early-MTV performance aesthetics. Essential for any study of 1983 North American rock visual culture. Context: Released in May 1983 as the second single from Bryan Adams' third studio album, 'Cuts Like a Knife' arrived at the precise moment when MTV — launched in August 1981 — was transitioning from a niche cable channel to a mainstream cultural force reshaping how rock acts broke nationally in the United States. Adams, a Canadian artist, leveraged the medium effectively: the video became one of his early MTV calling cards and helped propel the single to No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 6 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The song won the Procan Award for Canadian radio airplay in 1983 and received a Juno Award nomination for Single of the Year in 1984. Steve Barron's choice of a drained Hollywood swimming pool as a performance space reflects the resourceful, location-driven production philosophy of early music video — finding cinematically distinctive real-world spaces rather than constructing elaborate sets — a hallmark of Barron's approach throughout his defining early-MTV body of work. Director notes: Barron directed the 'Cuts Like a Knife' music video in 1983, filming it inside a drained, out-of-use indoor swimming pool in Hollywood, California — a location that had been unused for several years. The pool setting became integral to the video's visual identity and was subsequently used as the venue for Adams' platinum album party. Barron directed multiple Bryan Adams videos in this period, including 'This Time' (1983), 'Run to You' (1984), 'Heaven' (1985), and 'Summer of '69' (1985), establishing a sustained creative partnership during Adams' commercial breakthrough years. The video was produced by Simon Fields and Paul Flattery.