Pat Benatar and Bryan Adams rock it old school at PPG Paints Arena

Walking into PPG Paints Arena on Sunday night, I heard a woman behind me say, “This isn’t like going to a show in your 20s, it’s going to a show in your 50s. It’s a different vibe.”

That was a pretty good thesis statement for a concert that included icons of the 1980s. But while Bryan Adams — along with opening act Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo — may represent a bygone era of pop and rock, they showed why the old stuff is called “classic.”

Benatar is 72, but she can still take command of a stage. Boasting more than a dozen Top 40 singles in the United States, many of her songs are emblematic of the ’80s — and the Pittsburgh crowd got to hear plenty of them on this tour stop. Her husband and decades-long collaborator Giraldo provided another layer of musical excitement to their set with soaring guitar riffs and well-placed vocal additions.

They lit the fuse with rocking opener “All Fired Up” and just kept the energy going from there. Benatar’s trademark bellow was on full display under flashing rainbows of stage lights. She dedicated her second song, “Invincible,” to “all my sisters out there.”

While the firepower hasn’t left Benatar’s voice, her vocal range is definitely a little different. In hits including “Love Is a Battlefield” and “We Belong,” she didn’t try to hit the impassioned higher notes that fans have heard on recordings for decades.

She invited the audience to “go back” to the early 1980s for back-to-back bangers “Hell Is for Children” and “You Better Run,” both of which found the singer not holding back in any way with her wails. Benatar closed with a run of hits, including her signature “Love Is a Battlefield” and the song she said “started it all,” the high-octane “Heartbreaker.” It came with a well-placed interlude of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and an appropriately incendiary guitar solo from Giraldo.

Adams made the charming move of starting small … literally. Without much fanfare, he showed up on the B-stage at the back of the arena, toting his guitar and opening with “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started” and “Straight From the Heart.” Considering the latter’s consistent radio play — and the laid-back acoustic setup — the crowd’s singing rivaled the volume of Adams’ own.

This tour supports the Canadian singer-songwriter’s new album “Roll With the Punches,” which was released earlier this year. And while a few of those songs did make it into the set, Adams was happy to keep the hits coming. After making his way to the main stage, he launched into crowd-pleasers “Run to You” and “Somebody” early on, getting the audience singing along with the latter’s anthemic chorus.

As old-school as this show was (I heard the telltale click of a disposable film camera in the row behind me), Adams did a good job of keeping things fresh.

Light-up wristbands were distributed to fans pouring into the arena, and they flashed and pulsed with coordinated colors throughout the two-hour show. During the rockabilly tune “You Belong to Me,” an onstage cameraman searched out the most enthusiastic dancers in the crowd to project on the big screen. And before playing “This Time,” Adams told the story of finding the song’s music video on YouTube.

“Tonight we’re going to play the non-high-def version … and we’re going to attempt to play along with it, and we’re sure to screw it up, but that’s OK, it’s my show,” he said. “One thing, please, I beg you, I don’t want you laughing at my hair.”

They launched into the tune as the music video played on the screen behind the band. (They didn’t screw it up, and honestly, his hair was a masterpiece.)

During the title track of the new album — which fit in flawlessly with the battery of late-20th-century songs — a giant inflatable boxing glove floated over the floor seats.

While Adams has plenty of Mellencamp-esque classic rock songs, he’s perhaps most well-known for his ballads and softer rock tunes. He told the story of hearing a mariachi band play “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” at a Mexican restaurant, and the song itself featured some velvety Spanish guitar from band member Keith Scott.

He capped off his mainstage time with megahits and audience favorites, starting with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” a syrupy piano ballad that sits atop Billboard’s year-end Top 100 from 1991 and was featured on the soundtrack of “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.”

He followed that with a performance of nostalgic rock anthem “Summer of ‘69” that could’ve been played from a recording with how pitch-perfect it was. The band took their bows and bid their farewells after an extended version of “Cuts Like a Knife,” where he allowed many rounds of the audience to sing “na na na.”

Then it was back to the satellite stage, where he requested the glow of phone flashlights for “All For Love,” a quiet but fitting closer that showed off just how versatile the singer’s powerful rasp remains.

After a 26-song tour of his catalog and plenty of gracious interaction with his fans, Adams proved a prime example of why old-school is still cool.