Not that Tom Jones doesn’t offer the audience the hits that marked generations with his voice – as a good crooner raised in the 1960s, he knows the power of a good chorus. But more than just living off cheap nostalgia, he chooses a repertoire for the night that also proposes to analyze the aging of an artist, something that is clear from the beginning with the ballad “I’m Growing Old”, one of the main songs from his most recent album – “Surrounded by Time”, from 2021. Performed only by voice and piano, the song sets the tone for what is to come: a contrast between the experience of seeing your hair turn white and your head still feeling young, with a few hits along the way.
This is also what you can feel in two clever reinterpretations of the singer: “Not Dark Yet”, by Bob Dylan, and “Tower of Song”, by Leonard Cohen. If in the original version, Robert Zimmermann made his own creation a lament about old age that is approaching, Tom Jones transforms it into a conventional rock, as if he is not only trying to enjoy every last ray of light, but even applauding the sunset. On the other hand, when rereading “Tower of Song”, you can feel from the first verse that Jones knows what it is like to see friends disappear – throughout the night, he pays tribute to people who have already passed away and with whom he lived more or less closely, such as Prince, Burt Bacharach, Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry.
More than just highlighting how Jones feels the passage of time, the two songs also serve as symbols of a singer who, despite being known for bold hits, seeks to somehow bring depth and modernity to his repertoire. This can happen in the correct reinterpretation of another Dylan favorite (“One More Cup of Coffee”) or, even, when he performs two numbers from his most recent album that would not look bad on albums by “more contemporary” names, such as David Byrne (the provocative “Talking Reality Television Blues”) or Nick Cave (with the elegy “Lazarus Man”, a modern blues song that is almost ten minutes long).
It’s not exactly a surprise for those who have already taken the time to delve a little into the singer’s work. In September 1999, three months after Santana set the standard for albums full of guest appearances with “Supernatural”, the Welshman released the curious “Reload”. The album not only contains the original version of “Sexbomb”, but also includes reinterpretations by Talking Heads (“Burnin’ Down the House”), Lenny Kravitz (“Are You Gonna Go My Way”) and Iggy Pop (“Lust for Life”) alongside, respectively, Nina Persson, Robbie Williams and the Pretenders – not to mention Jones’ collaborations with indie darlings such as Portishead or James Dean Bradfield, from Manic Street Preachers. But let’s digress.
