When Bryan Adams first performed in India in 1995, he was at the peak of his career, I was in school and the idea of attending a concert by him was the source of much excitement. When the Canadian pop-rock veteran last played the country in 2011, he had been absent from the top of the charts for almost a decade, the pop landscape had changed, I was into my thirties and the fact that he was returning here for the fourth time became something of a joke. When he took the stage at JioGarden on Friday night in Mumbai, the third stop of a five-city tour, the prospect of watching him once again was the opportunity for me, now nearing middle age, to go on a fun nostalgia trip.

And that’s exactly what over 10,000 fans and I got. Adams blazed through 23 tracks in just under two hours, including all the 21 tunes that appear on his most recent best-of compilation album Ultimate, in support of which he’s currently travelling the world. This was the rare show where the 30-pluses out-tallied the teenagers. Even more surprisingly, there were more men than women in the audience for an act best known as a romantic balladeer.

Irrespective of age and gender, they all came for the hits and they got the hits, which was good enough to help them overlook the incongruity of the opening act, Hindi film playback singer Harshdeep Kaur, the half-an-hour wait for Adams to get on stage, and the inconsistent quality of the sound, which varied depending on which section you were standing.

If a devotee dragged you to the concert, then it’s unlikely that you would have been converted to the cult of Adams, who played it straight, apart from performing acoustic versions of smashes as “When You’re Gone”, “Straight From The Heart” and “All For Love”—the last two of which he closed the show with and rendered solo after the rest of the band walked off stage. That band included his long-standing guitarist Keith Scott, whose riffs add heft to the lightness of some of the compositions, and who is now a star in the eyes of Adams’ Indian fans that have seen him multiple times at the singer’s gigs over the years.

Adams, it should be said, is an astute artist who knows his following. He got the crowd to sing the opening lines of “Heaven”; obliged the demand for an encore of “Summer Of  ’69”—his most famous song here—immediately after it was done by singing another verse; took pictures of the audience “for Instagram”; randomly inserted the line “Kiki do you love me?” from fellow Canadian Drake’s “In My Feelings” into “Somebody”; and asked us to sway our hands or cellphones, jump or chant at all the appropriate points.

He also limited the lesser-known tracks to precisely five. While he channeled the crowd’s energy from “Run To You” to get us to sing along to “Go Down Rockin’”, he helpfully provided the lyrics of concert opener “Ultimate Love” in the video backdrop, the screen of which displayed those in the front row gamely dancing to the catchy but relatively unfamiliar “You Belong To Me”. As for “Brand New Day”, if anybody other than Adams had written it, they would have been sued for copyright infringement because of its similarity with “Summer Of ’69”. It was only during standard-issue love song “Please Stay” that limbs were still and larynxes relaxed.

We couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t skip one of them to acquiesce repeated requests for “Please Forgive Me”. After all, he deviated slightly from the set list he’s been following on this tour by expunging “This Time” on account of, well, shortage of time and replacing “I’m Ready” with “Let’s Make A Night To Remember”, which was one of two songs—the other being “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman”—during which women’s voices could be heard louder than those of men.

Adams’s own voice and energy barely dipped in strength through the gig; possibly an advertisement for his vegan lifestyle. The 58-year-old, who appeared spindly in a blue T-shirt and jeans, has already had to alter the lyrics of “18 Til I Die” from “Someday I’ll be 18 going on 55” to “65”. From the looks of things, he might have to change that to “75”. He’s likely to be selling out stadiums well into his platinum years, and hopefully maintaining his status as the international act that has toured India the most.