(Everything I Do) I Do It For You

Bryan Adams and "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You"

The summer of 1991 produced one of the most commercially dominant singles in the history of the Billboard Hot 100: "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You," Bryan Adams's contribution to the soundtrack of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The song became a genuine global phenomenon, holding the number one position in the United Kingdom for an unprecedented 16 consecutive weeks and achieving similar chart dominance across Europe, Australia, and dozens of other national markets. In the United States it spent an extraordinary seven weeks at number one on the Hot 100, becoming one of the defining pop records of the early 1990s.

Bryan Adams was already a well-established rock star by 1991. The Vancouver-born singer had spent most of the 1980s building a career as a hard-charging, blue-collar rock performer whose albums combined arena-ready guitar work with radio-friendly melodic construction. His 1985 album Reckless had produced multiple top-ten hits including "Run to You," "Somebody," and "Summer of '69," establishing him as one of Canada's most successful musical exports and a significant figure in mainstream rock.

The commission to write the theme for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves came from director Kevin Reynolds and producer Morgan Creek Productions. Adams collaborated on the song with producer and co-writer Michael Kamen, the British composer and orchestral arranger who had worked extensively with rock acts including Pink Floyd and Dire Straits. A third co-writer, Robert John "Mutt" Lange, contributed lyrics, bringing his expertise as one of the most commercially successful songwriters in rock history to the collaboration. Lange had worked extensively with Adams earlier in the decade and was the architect of several of the most successful rock albums of the 1980s.

The recording process produced a track that was deliberately designed to bridge the gap between rock and adult contemporary formats. The song's acoustic guitar introduction, orchestral arrangement courtesy of Kamen, and Adams's raw but controlled vocal delivery created a sonic profile that was emotionally epic without being sonically aggressive. This accessibility across multiple radio formats was crucial to the song's commercial strategy and contributed directly to its sustained chart dominance.

The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 29, 1991, at position 53. It climbed rapidly through the chart, reaching position 4 by the week of July 20 and then ascending to number one the following week, July 27, 1991. It held that position for seven weeks and remained on the Hot 100 for a total of 22 weeks, one of the longest chart runs recorded for a single in the era before chart methodology changed with the introduction of SoundScan in 1991. The song was released through A&M Records in the United States.

The film itself was a significant commercial event: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner, was one of the summer 1991 season's biggest box office performers, grossing over $390 million worldwide. The song's association with such a commercially dominant film gave it enormous promotional reach, with the music video running in heavy rotation on MTV and the song receiving airplay on rock, pop, and adult contemporary radio simultaneously. This cross-format penetration was unusual and contributed materially to the single's exceptional longevity.

Internationally, the song's impact was even more dramatic than its American chart performance suggested. In the United Kingdom, its 16-week run at number one remains one of the longest in the history of the UK singles chart, a record that stood for years and became a benchmark against which subsequent chart-toppers were measured. Similar chart domination occurred across continental Europe, where the combination of Adams's established rock credibility and the song's romantic grandeur made it an almost universal commercial phenomenon during the summer and autumn of 1991.

The song earned Adams a Grammy Award nomination and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song, though it notably lost the Oscar to Alan Menken's "Beauty and the Beast" from the Disney film of the same name, a result that generated considerable discussion at the time about the relative merits of the two songs and the criteria by which film music was evaluated. Despite the Oscar loss, the song's commercial performance cemented its place in popular music history as one of the most successful soundtrack singles of the decade and one of Bryan Adams's defining artistic achievements.