‘Some journalists asked me why I came back to Uruguay so soon.’ Bryan Adams stretched his arms out to embrace the 7,000-strong cheering and dancing crowd in the open-air Teatro del Verano last night. His fans roared even louder. He didn’t need to explain.

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The fourteen-year-old daughter of friends decided Bryan Adams wasn’t for her, so I went along in her place. My second Bryan Adams concert in just over a year, and I’m not even a fan. It seems Bryan was so taken by the crowd’s enthusiasm last March that he has become involved in a project to help disadvantaged teenagers in Montevideo.

Apart from the venue, and the fact that the night was cooler (I was glad of my five layers of clothing) the concert to me seemed like a carbon copy of last years’, down to the selection of songs, the performance of ‘Baby When You’re Gone’ with a volunteer from the audience, the crowd rapport, and even the clarity of the stars in the sky. He only played one song, ‘Oxygen’, from his new album ‘Eleven’, and the fans were marginally less effusive during that one as they hadn’t mastered the lyrics yet.

Bryan had found a recipe which works in Uruguay, and he’s not going to change it. Back home, I looked up my review of last year’s concert, with a view to preparing a new one for yesterday’s, but I found there was nothing I could add. So here is what I wrote after my first Bryan Adams experience:

I don’t know much about Bryan Adams. I remember two lines of the song for the ‘Robin Hood’ film with Kevin Costner. My kids would sing:

‘Everything I do,
I do it for you.’

And then, in chorus, they would chant:
“And-then-they-slop-py-kiiiiiiissssss.’ Giggle giggle.

I didn’t even know he was coming to Uruguay, until I heard this radio report: ‘A fierce storm swept through Uruguay yesterday, with heavy rain and winds of up to 145 kilometres per hour. One man died, and eighty people were evacuated from their homes. Many places are still without electricity. The Bryan Adams concert scheduled for last night at the Centenario Stadium will be held tonight instead.’

As it turned out, a friend who had tickets for the concert couldn’t go the following night as Ricky Martin playing in Punta del Este took priority. So we went.

The last concert we’d been to was U2 twelve years ago. In fact I think I stopped keeping up with music after my U2 phase, despite my children’s efforts.

‘Mum, you’ll love this: it’s classical – just music, no voices’ , my son said, as a heavy instrumental piece by Metallica almost broke my eardrums.

Eight years later he tried again. ‘Mark Hollis, mum, your style, totally – you will meditate to it.’ Few lyrics, few sounds, minimalist, but oh, so depressed and depressing. I listened to it once, and shelved it in case I ever might need music to accompany my suicide.

The kids have had a little more success recently, with Cold Play and Snow Patrol, and even Regina Spektor. But Bryan Adams? Very nineties, surely. And very middle-of-the-road.

Well, obviously our friends don’t allow twelve years to pass between concerts. And Bryan Adams is way better than Ricky Martin. And we’ve never been to the Centenario Stadium. So we took the tickets.

The Centenario Stadium was built in 1930 to host the first World Cup. Construction was only finished five days after the championship started, so the opening match had to be relocated to another stadium. It has undergone numerous changes since then, and now has a capacity of 74,000. About one tenth of it was sectioned off for last night’s concert, and a huge stage erected at the edge of the football field.

Every seat was filled, and excitement mounted for the hour before Bryan Adams arrived. I tried to analyse the audience: definitely a well-heeled bunch, mostly in their thirties – I felt ancient. Many of them were on mobile phones, trying to spot friends in the crowd – suddenly their faces would break into a smile and they would start waving at a speck in the distance. Everybody stood as Adams and his band, dressed in jeans and dark blue t-shirts, ran across the field to the stage.

His rapport with the crowd was amazing: very little chat – just ‘Buenas noches: sorry about yesterday, thanks for coming back today’, and he was off for an hour of wonderfully predicatable, comforting songs. I realized I knew loads of them: ‘Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?’, ‘Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven’, ‘All for Love’, ‘Summer of sixty-Nine’ and of course, ‘Everything I Do’.

After the first hour I gave up trying to muster up any enthusiasm from my husband, whose tastes are a little more high-brow. “Surely 6,999 people can’t ALL be misguided!” But he enjoying gazing into the sky and identifying the stars.

What surprised me was that everyone knew all the lyrics and sang along – and this was not disturbing. I remember getting irritated at a Leonard Cohen concert twenty-five years ago with the woman beside me feeling she needed to be Cohen’s co-singer. In the open air, with huge speakers, you simply don’t hear the crowd.

Concerts have changed over the last twelve years: people need to go home with a photo of the big star, and cameras and mobiles flash throughout the performance. Why they have to take hundreds of identical photos, I do not understand. Another difference: whereas during slow songs in the past people would wave lighters, now they wave their mobiles.

Adams’ act was simple, just moving from the middle of the stage to one side then the other, exchanging positions with Keith Scott, whose guitar performance was excellent. At one point Adams came down a ladder and into the crowd – the women went wild, but it was a controlled wildness – no-one shoving or fainting.

Later he invited a volunteer from the crowd to sing ‘Baby When you’re Gone’ with him. A young, bouncy girl was selected from the crowd, and she performed superbly – perhaps not perfectly on the note, but with a natural stage presence, not shy to answer Adams questions (‘Do you want to be a singer?’ ‘Yes, but it’s very difficult.’ ‘Well, I managed, so you can!’) and moving to the music the way South Americans do from the moment they can stand.

After an hour and a half the concert ended – but Adams came back, alone, for half an hour of encores. And this, for me, was a completely different, superior concert. Even my husband swapped one set of stars for another. Adams’ raspy voice, reminiscent of Springsteen, got straight to me. I stood up on my concrete chair to get a better view, and felt I was closer to the clear sky and Orion’s Belt, Syrius, and the Southern Cross sparkling brightly above.

He was genuinely appreciative of the crowd’s warm reception .

‘Muchas gracias,’ he said. ‘I never expected such a welcome. I was driving around your city today, and you people are really lucky. I knew nothing about Uruguay before coming here, but you have a jewel.’

Muchas gracias, Bryan, for a fun evening. (But this time, I feel it was a bit of a copout…)