Joe Cocker
No Ordinary World

But what if 17 really brought bad luck?

Poor Joe didn't care much about that number, given that as a subject of Her Majesty he believed it was 13 that should be avoided. The fact remains that this "No Ordinary World" is his seventeenth studio album, and it didn't bring him much luck in terms of fame or sales. So much so that even Wikipedia doesn't mention it (except for the track list), and commercially it barely managed to earn a gold record (100,000 copies sold in a single market) and, by chance, in a country like France where Joe had never really taken off, a trivial matter for someone used to platinum records galore. In short, a flop, but to pay homage to a great interpreter of music in my opinion also means highlighting lesser works like this album.

Lesser, but certainly not to be thrown away, enriched as it is by covers of greats like Winwood (the excellent "While You See a Chance" that flows pleasantly) and Cohen (the opening track) or pieces with an unmistakable aplomb like "My Father's Song": an R&B that cannot leave you indifferent. Despite some rock intrusions here and there, like in "She Believes in Me", the substance of the album is undoubtedly pop with peaks like "Where Would I Be Now", not coincidentally by Michael McDonald, exotic glimpses like the Arabic-tinged "Soul Rising", slow songs to woo like "Naked without You" not coincidentally: "Nudo senza Te"...... like in the good old days of "With a Little Help from My Friends", nice catchy choruses like "Love to Lean on" and finally "On My Way Home" certainly poignant starting from the title, but not able to add anything to a work that struggles to reach the 3 stars I grant for excess, taking into account the excellent acoustic quality of the product and the respect for the sea of musicians (over thirty) who gave their best to make it at least decent.

The above refers to the "European" version of the CD released in 1999, the following year, to curry favor, unsuccessfully, with that big market, a version with 14 tracks will be released that adds nothing positive to "No Ordinary World", except perhaps an aesthetic improvement of its questionable "European" graphics; a theme in which unfortunately our hero never excelled throughout his career, forgetting alas that: certainly it is the ear that decides the fate of a track or an album, but the eye also wants its share! Just think of "The Dark Side of the Moon" or the early masterpieces of Yes.