Bryan Adams took a song mocking Donald Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st state into Texas. He says the crowd stood up.
“We debuted that song in St. Louis on our American tour this summer, and every night it got a standing ovation, which surprised us because we were playing a lot of red states,” Adams told the Los Angeles Times. “We were playing in Texas, and every night people just stood up.”
His road crew noticed. “Anybody working production or catering, they’d all come out for that song every night and stand on the side of the stage to watch the reaction.”
The song is “51st State.” It came out on Canada Day, and now it anchors How’s It Goin’, released Friday, Nov. 6 on Adams’ own BAD Records. It is the first album about Canada in a career that has sold 100 million records, and it goes well past one protest song.
The year that made the album
Adams did not set out to write about Trump. He was touring Africa when German filmmakers asked for a song for a documentary series called Canada’s Wild Eastern Edge. He started reading up on the East Coast to write it. “In the process of doing that I started digging into the history of Canada and compiled quite a bit of stuff,” he said.
Then the news got loud.
Trump returned to office in January 2025 and brought back tariffs on Canada along with the 51st-state talk. By July 2026 he was calling Canada’s annexation inevitable, “we don’t need them, but they need us,” and signing an order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” On July 20 he hit Canadian goods with 50 per cent tariffs under a Depression-era law no president had used that way before. In October he said Canada could “keep hockey and O Canada” as a state, and that Canada was “learning their lesson.”
“I was compelled to write something that was of the time,” Adams said. “51st State” came out July 1. “Lake Ontario,” his answer to the renaming order, followed in October. The rest he wrote on the South African leg of his tour and recorded in about three months at his Warehouse Studio in Vancouver.
“If certain people can say what they want, so can I,” he told Ultimate Classic Rock. On the annexation talk: “It’s just his garbage.”
What is on it
Twelve songs, 13 on the digital version, about 41 minutes:
How’s It Goin’
Highway 16
Diesel & Dirt
The Battle of Lundy’s Lane
The Ballad of Terry Fox
51st State
When Canada Joined Newfoundland
A Handful of Gold
Iron Ribbon
The Bridge
Canada’s Wild Eastern Edge
Heave Away
Lake Ontario (digital bonus)
Most of it is history, not politics. “The Battle of Lundy’s Lane” is the bloodiest fight of the War of 1812, fought near Niagara Falls in July 1814. Nobody won, and the border has sat where it was ever since. “When Canada Joined Newfoundland” flips the usual phrasing on 1949. “Highway 16” is the Yellowhead.
“A lot of people have been saying to me, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know about the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, or the story of how Newfoundland got together,’” Adams said. “That was sort of a defining battle between North and South, but nobody won it. It was just that the lines had been drawn, and those lines still stand today.”
He wanted to call it Songs from the Great White North. That title was taken. “Then it just occurred to me, it’s something all Canadians say: how’s it goin’?”
Terry Fox
“The Ballad of Terry Fox” is the song Adams talks about most. He wrote it for Sean Menard’s documentary Run Terry Run, which screened at the Calgary International Film Festival this fall, and he remembers the original.
“I remember Terry’s run back in 1980 when I was on tour in Canada playing 200-capacity clubs,” he said. “Without knowing it, Terry gave our country a ‘something’ and ‘someone’ that everyone could agree on and unite behind.”
Fox ran when Quebec separatism was the national story. “Out of nowhere comes this guy from B.C. who’s just raising money for cancer. He becomes a national hero, and the separatism story becomes second page.”
The song debuted at No. 25 on Billboard Canada’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart in September.
He hopes Trump hears it
“I really hope he hears that. I hope he slags it off, too,” Adams told CBC’s Tom Power. “I’m not sure he’s ever gonna, but if he does, I would love it.”
They have met. Years ago, Trump walked into an Adams concert in Atlantic City.
“He came in with a bunch of ladies and I was like, ‘Hey everybody, look who’s here! Stand up. Take a bow, mister,’” Adams said. “He did. Then I tell him, ‘Please sit down.’”
Asked whether he worries about retaliation for mocking the president over the Epstein files: “No, not really. I didn’t really consider it, but next time I go through customs, I’ll have a think.”
“I’m singing about my country, so who cares? And if they can’t take a joke, too bad.”
American fans apologize to him
Adams has spent most of 2026 on American stages, and the trade war follows him there.
“There’s just a lot of eye rolling that happens if the conversation ever comes up, and apologies do come up as well,” he said. “You just have to take it with the best humour as you can.”
He is not the only one hearing it. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told Canadians “we miss you” as Canadian visits to the U.S. dropped 23 per cent. Barack Obama said of Canadians, “They’re so nice. And somehow we’ve gotten them so mad.” And this week, Democrats took Congress promising to repeal the Canada tariffs, while Trump answered with a hat that says “VETO” and a 50 per cent auto tariff set for Jan. 1.
Adams says he is not angry. “I’m just writing about what I see, and it came very quickly.”
“I do hope that people look at what’s going on and consider the promises that were made, and reflect on what those promises are today.”
About the radio
Adams says the live reaction has outrun everything else. “The song is getting zero traction on radio, no media, nothing. It’s literally just when they hear the lyrics, they respond.”
In Canada, that is not quite right. “51st State” entered Billboard Canada’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart at No. 34 after its Canada Day release. The song is getting played here. Just not where he has been playing it.
Not everyone is cheering
Some Canadian musicians think Adams found his flag late.
“Sure, it’s fine to become a nationalist after years as a neutral on the international arena while some of us have been bleeding Canada from the beginning,” Dave Bidini of the Rheostatics told the Globe and Mail. His band has made whole albums about the Great Lakes and the Group of Seven.
Former CBC music librarian Mark Rheaume was kinder: “He’s never been political, or even Canadian. But he has recognized a ‘stand and be counted moment’ and acted on it, so I give him full props.”
Adams grew up partly abroad as a diplomat’s son and kept a home in England for years, though he says he has not lived there in a decade. The pandering question, he says, never crossed his mind.
“There are things that I feel right now, and these are the things that are happening right now. I’m just writing my truth. This is where I’m at.”
Sources:
CBC Q with Tom Power: Bryan Adams interview (Nov. 6, 2026)
Los Angeles Times: Bryan Adams is thinking about war with America (in 1814) (Nov. 5, 2026)
The Globe and Mail: With his new album of Canadiana, Bryan Adams is waking up the commentators (Nov. 6, 2026)
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