Cuts Like A Knife is the album that I discovered Bryan Adams for the first time, more specifically, the Title Track by way of the video that was in heavy rotation on MTV. That voice, that guitar solo, that.....Hot Babe in a bikini!! Yes, the video was pretty damn cool, but the song is what hooked me and still does to this day. The album as a whole is pretty good, but not perfect. Bryan's definitive trademark sound is all over the album, but there's really only a few songs that just nailed it for me and are true hits. Knife, This Time and What's It Gonna Be still deliver in a big way for me.

As for the rest of the album, the songs tend to fall into radio-friendly "ballads" that were clearly aimed at reaching a specific demographic. I think a long the lines of how Michael Bolton crafted some of his albums of trying to lock down two types of fans, but hoping that the ballads would get him over into a larger fan base. When done right, the songs can be very distinct sounding, when done wrong, they just blend one into the other. Overall, Knife is a solid album, even if I don't listen to it all that much anymore. Of all the ballads on this one, Straight From The Heart is still pretty damn good.