The record in context

“It’s Not Unusual” was written by Les Reed and Gordon Mills — Mills was also Tom Jones’s manager — and it was originally intended for Sandie Shaw, the barefoot British pop star of the mid-1960s. Jones was brought in to sing the demonstration recording so Shaw could hear how the song might sound. The story, told many times since, is that Shaw heard the demo and reportedly felt the song suited Jones better than it suited her. Whether it was generosity or instinct, the result was the same: the demo singer kept the song, and in early 1965 it reached number one in the UK and the American top ten.

That is worth pausing over. A singer’s entire career — the Grammy for Best New Artist, the six decades that followed — can be traced to a moment when someone else’s song landed in the right throat. Jones had released one single before, “Chills and Fever,” which went nowhere. This was the second throw of the dice, and it had to work. Listen to the record with that in mind and you can hear a young man singing as if everything depends on it, because it did.

Listen closely

The first thing to notice is the brass. The arrangement opens with a punchy, almost Latin-flavoured horn figure, and the whole record swings with a confidence that the lyric only half-shares. “It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone” — the words are a shrug, a man talking himself out of jealousy. But Jones sings the shrug like a dare. The tension between the casual lyric and the full-throated delivery is the engine of the record, and it is there from the first bar.

Listen next for the phrasing. Jones was twenty-four, with a voice already far bigger than his years, and you can hear him learning in real time how to aim it. On the verses he stays conversational, almost spoken in places; then the chorus arrives and he opens the throttle, the vibrato widening on “cry-y-y.” It is a young singer showing off — but the showing off is the point. The song is about a man insisting he is fine, and the vocal keeps betraying him. Every time he leans into a note, the mask slips.

Finally, listen to the ending. The record does not fade so much as strut off, the horns and the voice trading punches to the last second. It is a performance with no comedown, which is exactly why it worked as an introduction: Britain in 1965 met Tom Jones at full volume, and never got the chance to mistake him for anyone else.