Tom Jones

Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Jones is back. And though it may seem an incredulous thing to suggest of a singer who has spent the better part of five decades making music, 24 Hours, his new album, might just be his best yet. It is certainly his most fully realized, and also his most intimate by far. There are reasons for this: the man who is arguably the best interpreter of any song he chooses to sing regardless of genre has now, at last, turned songwriter. For the first time in his career, Tom has had a major hand in writing most of the songs collected here.

"It's all very well just singing songs," he considers now, "but for this record I really wanted to get properly personal. I've been getting reflective recently, looking over my journey through life, and I wanted to get that down on song. You know, I've recorded and have had success with all kinds of music, I�ve done 'Sexbomb� and all the rest of it, but this time I wanted to make something that was all about me, my stories, my life. In other words, you listen to this album and you get the real me."

The genesis of '24 Hours� began, as perhaps all great journeys should, in a nightclub after dark. This one was in Dublin, it was long gone midnight, and Tom was drinking with his friend, Bono.

"Right there and then, Bono started asking me about my life, my early years, my old hopes and expectations and ambitions, and he took mental notes all the while."

That conversation, ranging from his early days of digging ditches in Pontypridd to becoming a twinkling-eyed megastar and which is summarized in the snake-hipped moment of celebratory self-awareness that is the album track 'Sugar Daddy�, written especially by Bono and The Edge for this album, gave Tom an insight that led him to, for the very first time, get involved in writing his own songs.

Surrounding himself with a musically diverse group of producers and songwriters, Tom set about creating songs that would be big and impassioned and cinematic. Inspired by the kind of soul-searching that, he says, comes to us all sooner or later, much of '24 Hours� concerns those subjects closest to Tom's heart - his family, his grandchildren, life and death, and the power of memory.

"I was adamant, though, that I didn't want this just to be an album of old memories, but rather to somehow convey the sense that I am still very much in the present tense here, I'm still as large as life, and busy making new memories all the time."

One song that perfectly encapsulates the intimate tone of so much of this record is 'The Road�, a wonderfully impassioned ballad about man�s one true love, his voice filling every note until it comes close to cracking.

"That song is about my wife," he says, almost bashfully, "about how the road always leads back to her. You know, she may not have always liked some of the things I've done along the way, but I've always come back to her, and could never be apart from her. She is my rock, and has been for the past 51 years now. 'The Road� is my tribute to her."

He played it for her recently. Did she like it? "I bloody well hope so!" he booms.

Tom Jones is that very rarest of things, a living legend. Who else do you know can be so effortlessly linked with Elvis Presley, various Rat Packers, Van Morrison, Robbie Williams and the Queen? Not to mention seminal music maestros Portishead, songwriter extraordinaire Burt Bacharach and, even the fictitious icon that is James Bond? Has there ever been a more malleable entertainer, someone who can play Vegas one moment and Wembley the next? Who can appeal to young and old, black and white, cool and cutting edge alike? Tom Jones was one of the great performers of the 20th century. He is now one of the great performers of the 21st.

'24 Hours�, his first album for S Curve, was recorded in Los Angeles throughout last year, and was mostly produced by Future Cut, the outfit who have previously worked with Lily Allen, Dizzee Rascal and Goldie. It includes the shirt button-popping 'I'm Alive� (produced by S*A*M and Sluggo, the team behind Gym Class Heroes and Metro station)), a boisterous floor filler that Tom sings in a manner that suggests he might just be nuclear powered, the sophisticated soul of first single 'If He Should Ever Leave You� and the pop genius of 'Give A Little Love.� But we all know Tom can do upbeat, floor-filling party songs.

However '24 Hours� is so much more than that. His version of Bruce Springsteen's 'The Hitter� (produced by Betty Wright, Mike Mangini and Steve Greenberg�their first production together since helming Joss Stone�s first two acclaimed albums) is remarkable, the sad tale of a boxer on his last legs, Tom conveying the man's broken resolve with a sense of drama redolent of Richard Burton at his Shakespearean best. His performance of �More Than Memories,� a �lost,� previously unrecorded composition by Stax Queen Carla Thomas is equally poignant. This air of reflection reached its apex with what is perhaps the album's pivotal moment, a Tom Jones co-written song called 'Seasons� in which he confronts his past with an unflinching eye. "There's a reason for passing time," he sings. "These are the seasons of my life." And the sense that this is an historic Tom Jones album, one that brings the true substance, grit, strength and age of the man is best exemplified by the title track; a spine-tingling gaze into the abyss, delivered with sublime gravitas.

That someone of his august years could ring in with such a late-coming classic as this is testament to what Tom has always been about, and always will be: the power of the song, the power of The Voice. In so many ways, he is the godfather of modern soul, a man without whom the likes of Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson, Joss Stone and Duffy would never have existed.

At the age of 68, and a recently anointed knight of the realm, Sir Tom Jones is still firing on all cylinders, still a huge music fan, still a genuinely great artist. '24 Hours� is about to send him back into the world's arenas and hearts. Or, in his own more humble words, "I'm just opening up shop again. Let's see who comes in through the door."Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Jones is back. And though it may seem an incredulous thing to suggest of a singer who has spent the better part of five decades making music, '24 Hours,� his new album, might just be his best yet. It is certainly his most fully realized, and also his most intimate by far. There are reasons for this: the man who is arguably the best interpreter of any song he chooses to sing regardless of genre has now, at last, turned songwriter. For the first time in his career, Tom has had a major hand in writing most of the songs collected here.