Tom Jones's 20 greatest songs – ranked!

Ahead of his 80th birthday on Sunday, we run down the Welsh superstar’s biggest and best belters

by Michael Hann

20. The Hitter (2008)

Tom Jones’s 2008 album 24 Hours was a mixed bag, with cheery efforts to recapture his swinging mojo (If He Should Ever Leave You) and a song from Bono and the Edge (Sugar Daddy). But best of all was this sombre, southern soul rereading of a Bruce Springsteen ballad about a veteran fighter. The metaphor is obvious, but the song is undeniable.

19. I (Who Have Nothing) (1970)

Jones’s voice – roughly, a constipated bull rhino who has mistakenly been given Viagra – isn’t always great on ballads because it expands to fill every available space. Give him something florid and overblown, though, and he’s devastating. On this Italian hit, with English lyrics by Leiber and Stoller, he defies you to suggest that maybe he is laying it on a bit thick.

18. Hide and Seek (1969)

A B-side that has become a collectible Northern Soul classic, Hide and Seek is all thrusting brass, twanging guitar and Jones sounding like he’s having fun. It’s a shade over two minutes that’s absolutely irresistible – not an overpowering performance, but a record that’s perfectly constructed to deliver a shot of adrenaline.

17. Slow Down (2004)

Everyone has had a bash at rehabilitating Tom Jones this century and Jools Holland’s was one of the best. Their joint album steered Jones back towards R&B without any modern affectations. This version of the Larry Williams stomper is a thrill.

16. Burning Hell (2010)

Praise & Blame was the first of three albums produced by Ethan Johns that took Jones out of Vegas and insisted he be treated as an artist. Bob Dylan’s What Good Am I? was the statement track, but this version of John Lee Hooker’s Burning Hell was more remarkable, casting Jones the Voice as the White Stripes of the valleys.

15. Jezebel (2012)

Lo and behold, Jack White duly took an interest, and Jones recorded a single for Third Man with White producing. The A-side was Howlin’ Wolf’s Evil, but the B-side, a spare and haunted take on the betrayal ballad, was the keeper. Fantastic. 

14. Right Place, Wrong Time (1974)

The 70s and 80s were not, by and large, golden eras for Jones the recording artist – too much bad MOR country – but there were occasional gems. This Dr John cover concludes one of the worst Jones albums and – all sweaty and funky – appears to have been flown in from another record.

13. Hard to Handle (live) (1969)

Any Jones album recorded in the first decade of his career with the word “live” is worth hearing. The bands were routinely fantastic and Jones was in his element, much tougher than he was in the studio. Here he takes on Otis Redding and earns respect.

12. Detroit City (1967)

Quite why a Welshman was so convinced he could handle Americana will remain a mystery, but Jones – somehow, because goodness knows his accent wasn’t suited to the spoken word section – pulled it off. Jones had first heard this on Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1965 LP Country Songs for City Folks, which proved to be hugely influential on him.

11 Resurrection Shuffle (1971)

There wasn’t much hint from its title that the album Tom Jones Sings She’s a Lady would contain something quite so fabulously frantic as this cover of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke’s hit from a few months earlier. It got a single release as the B-side to Puppet Man, making it the only Tom Jones record of any length that is 100% perfect across both sides.

10. Lusty Lady (1975)

Once again, a standout on a second-rate album. The title is misleading: this isn’t Jones satisfying the needs of a hot mama. “Lusty lady, she just died,” the song opens, and Jones unspools Johnny Bristol’s story of a hard-luck life over four minutes of sinuous funk.

9. The Green, Green Grass of Home (1966)

Who at Decca had the bright idea of associating Jones with violent death? It was an unusual marketing tactic, but it worked. First came the ballad of a death row prisoner on the day of his execution, which is very much a period piece – the spoken-word section is pure corn – but Jones could sell any chorus. Another filch from Jerry Lee Lewis.

8. Elvis Presley Blues (2015)

The third of Jones’s Ethan Johns albums continued with the theme of unexpected choices. Gillian Welch’s song about a poor boy changing the world would have obvious resonances, but the power here comes from the arrangement, a church built to draw attention to the altar that is Jones’s voice.

7. What’d I Say? (1965)

To hear why Decca would have wanted to sign Jones, listen to Live on Air 1965-68, a collection of BBC recordings. His version of this Ray Charles standard is as hard and fierce as you like, a sweaty explosion of verve and charisma, proof that before anything else, Jones was an R&B singer.

6. The Sun Died (1971)

Grand, existential despair – of course it was a French song first – that was perfectly suited to Jones at his most overwrought. But the overpowering choruses only work because Jones displays such restraint on the verses. One of his best performances, and a song that would have fitted snugly on to any one of Scott Walker’s I-IV.

5. Looking Out My Window (1968)

Yet another peerless B-side, co-written by Jones, a tense stomper that’s not a million miles away in mood from Frankie Valli’s Beggin’. Had Jones not been tempted by Vegas, he would easily have been Britain’s greatest R&B singer: there’s so much evidence of his brilliance.

4. Delilah (1968)

The other great Jones death song, in which he is compelled to murder his lover for her infidelity. It’s ridiculous and overblown, but also a reminder that a singer has to be a salesperson, not just an artist. Jones sells this so hard that by the record’s end you have new double glazing, fresh carpets and unwanted PPI.

3. The Art of Noise ft Tom Jones – Kiss (1988)

Jones had been performing Kiss in his Vegas show; The Art of Noise saw it on TV and suggested the collaboration that would revive Jones’s career. There is, naturally, no delicacy: you rather get the impression Jones wants the extra time and kiss of anyone who passes his eye line. It proved, though, that Jones was game for anything.

2. Tower of Song (2012)

A single line holds the key to Jones’s interpretation of Leonard Cohen: “I was born with the gift of a golden voice.” Sung by Cohen it was a joke, a nod to the unlikeliness of it being he who was trapped in the tower of song. With Jones, who really was born with that gift, the song became a defiant raging against the dying of the light, from inside a tower he could never leave.

1. It’s Not Unusual (1965)

It’s worth looking for live versions (the medley with Land of 1000 Dances on Live! At the Talk of the Town is excellent), but Jones’s breakthrough hit is pretty much unimprovable. He recorded this version as a demo for Sandie Shaw, but she passed and suggested he release it himself. It’s almost impossible, now, to imagine it having been meant for anyone else, so effortlessly commanding is his performance, even if the notion of Jones as lovesick is a hard one to grasp. It was co-written by Les Reed, who went on to write Marching on Together for Leeds United.