Throwback Thursday: "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" Bryan Adams

With his rugged good looks and sensitive power ballads, Canadian soft rocker Bryan Adams was like the mature woman's matinee idol of the late '80s and early '90s, selling millions of albums and earning four #1 hits along the way. His final visit to the top of the Hot 100 was with "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?," the Oscar-nominated theme song from the 1995 Johnny Depp film Don Juan DeMarco. The production, featuring delicate Spanish guitar licks and clapping castanets, still sounds remarkably fresh today. But "Have You Ever" does not escape the cheesy lyrics ("To really love a woman/to understand her/you gotta know her deep inside...and give her wings when she wants to fly") and lethally boring pacing that plagued so much of the era's signature adult contemporary fare. B-

17 years ago this week, "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" was the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100.