Tom Jones In Two Terrific Stories: USA Today “You’ve Got To Have Young Ears” & The Day (CT) “68 is the new 30″
January 6th, 2009USA Today, at 2.28 million, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the United States, gave Sir Tom the treatment he merits today: an admiring feature with three photos. A small Connecticut outlet, TheDay.com, wrote of Tom, Tina and Neil, pointing out how young they really are. It all makes very good reading. And, we all can assure Tom, he does not blend in and he is definitely a contender.
Lyrics, Longevity, New Album by Tom Jones
By Edna Gundersen/USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys made a beeline for Tom Jones at London’s Q Awards in October. Jones, 68 and still a magnet for young acolytes, recalls the indie-rock singer gushing, “I love Love Me Tonight. It’s slamming! We play it before we go on stage every night.”
Turner then prodded the Ting Tings for their assessment, but the hot dance-pop duo had been out of town and said they weren’t current on radio hits, prompting laughter.
The song blared from radios in 1969.
Nearly four decades later, and 42 years since Jones won the Grammy for best new artist, the full-throated Welsh pop star remains capable of surprising fans with remarkably fresh and popular returns.
“You’ve got to have young ears,” says Jones, perched on a couch in his Century City high-rise office.
New album 24 Hours, his first U.S. studio release in 15 years, finds him collaborating with Future Cut, the British production duo behind Lily Allen and Estelle. He submits a soulful, brass-fueled cover of Bruce Springsteen’s The Hitter and turns in a robust version of the Tommy James classic I’m Alive.
“Tom Jones is like the William Shatner of classic-pop singers,” says Spin editor Doug Brod. “He has one of those voices that’s still powerful and instantly recognizable, and perhaps a bit kitschy. His willingness to poke fun at his panty-catching reputation and his engagement with trends set him apart from MOR nostalgists like Engelbert Humperdinck.”
The former ditch digger who exploded in the ’60s with It’s Not Unusual and What’s New Pussycat? enjoyed a late-career resurgence with such unexpected hits as 1988’s collaboration with Art of Noise on Prince’s Kiss and 2000’s Sex Bomb with Mousse T.
This time, his high-profile partners are U2’s Bono and Edge, who co-wrote the brazen Sugar Daddy after drinking with Jones in a Dublin club. (Opening lyrics: “I’ve got male intuition/I’ve got sexual ambition/I’m the last great tradition.”)
“It’s a bragging song,” Jones says. “I liked it, but I thought, what are people going to think? But it’s done in a clever way, not in a sloppy or blatantly sexy way. It’s a wink.”
Hours’ lyrics and vocals serve up less macho swagger than a typical Jones disc, a result of the singer taking an active role in songwriting for the first time in his career.
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