No Ordinary World [UK]

Personnel includes: Joe Cocker (vocals); Steve McEwan (acoustic & electric guitars); Tim Pierce, Steve Power, Adam Seymour, Billy Lang (electric guitar); Michael Thompson (guitar); Melvyn Duffy (pedal steel); John Savannagh, Chris Elliot (piano); C.J. Vanston (Fender Rhodes piano, keyboards, synthesizer); John Savannagh (Hammond B-3 organ); Peter Gardeno (keyboards); Dave Clayton (synthesizer); Mark Smith, Neil Stubenhaus, David Catlin-Birch (bass); Jeremy Stacey, John R. Robinson (drums); Andy Duncan (percussion); Marlena Jeter, Bryan Adams, Mortonette, Jenkins, Natalie Jackson, Mary Carewe, Helen Hampton, Katie Kissoon (background vocals).
Producers: Steve Power, Peter John Vettese, Pete Smith, Jean-Jacques Goldman.
Recorded at Twin Studios, Paris, France; Metropolis, Area 21, and Olympic Studio 1, London, England; Record Plant, Los Angeles, Calfornia.
Joe Cocker's appeal, like his voice, can safely be said to be timeless; NO ORDINARY WORLD could arguably have been recorded any time after 1985. Here the craggy, gravel- and phlegm-voiced troubadour tunefully gurgles and croaks his way through various covers, including Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan" and Steve Winwood's "While You See a Chance," reinterpreting previously established songs in much the same fashion as he's done since the late 1960s.
Cocker weathered the years better than many of his contemporaries, due in large part to the fact that he's always sounded as old as he is here. Joe's umpteenth foray into the pop jungle is also sometimes genuinely poignant, as on "Naked Without You," on which he unleashes some of the raw emotion he put into "With A Little Help From My Friends" back in the Neolithic era, to moving effect.