Nokia

“It was written by Marc Broussard, a guy from down south, whom I’ve met. He’s a southern musician, he’s from New Orleans and we kind of took a few liberties. We kind of rearranged it a little, we changed the words around, because it was all about collecting fish and shellfish and all that so I couldn’t be singing that. So we kind of messed around with it. It’s a traditional kind of Cocker approach I would say.”

“Matt Serletic co-wrote that one together with Danny Myrick and Stephanie Bentley. He was trying to custom-write this song for me, which a lot of writers do. We wanted a ‘little rocker’, you know. But he had me thinking twice when he put that line in about ‘…listen to some Joe Cocker’.”

“This was written by Kara Dioguardi, Mitch Allan and Nick Lachey. I have friends who’d love to hear me sing blues. And when I play them that they are not too crazy about me. But for me I guess it’s probably my favourite track on the record, I don’t know why. I did the vocal in one solo performance. A lot of times we splice them up and use little bits from here and there but with that one I just got totally wrapped up into the song. As I said when you get a little bit older and you have to be involved, you have to dig deep to bring that stuff out. And I had to dig pretty deep on that one.”

“Again, Matt and Danny, plus Aimee Proal. This is what kind of got the ball rolling, that song and ‘Hard Knocks’. The thing is, when you get a little older it’s difficult to find a subject matter that isn’t too ‘teenage’, so I asked them to come up with something that I could sing with conviction. And I think it turned out pretty good.” “I don’t really know what you would call this album: ‘rock/pop’? It’s a little more pop than I’ve been into for quite a while so it would scare me sometimes. I would do the basic tracks and then Matt would go away and do some of these overdubs and he had all these electronic things on there. It was sometimes like ‘Oh, my god!’. But I wanted to work with Matt very much. And I always knew what kind of record we would be making.”

“Again, Matt co-wrote that, this time with Jeffrey Steele and Danny Myrick. We don’t have many sensitive ballads on the album and it just seemed to be nice to break things up a little. When I was in the studio I lost my vision while I was singing that tune. Matt asked if I could sing it in that key and there were a couple of notes that are a little high for me. I always have a print out of the words, and I looked over, and suddenly the page went blank. It scared the shit out of me. I had to go to the doctor. I had a ‘strike’ in my eye, but not like what you call ‘a stroke to the brain’. It never quite recovered. They said it was a bit of plaque that broke off and went all the way up into the blood vessel. And I got this little cloud in my eye and the blood can’t get through to the retina. That’s a little side-story. But as soon as I think of the song, I think: ‘Oh yeah, that one’.”

“A friend of mine, Ollie Marland, wrote that. Sometimes you can listen to tune after tune after tune and nothing really springs out. But there was something about that, I just liked the chord progression, you kind of don’t expect the thing to go where it goes. It changes. It just struck me as being a little different. And there you go: that’s why I chose it.”

“I don’t know where this song came in from, but I just love the melody, you know. It’s probably one of the most commercial, ‘playable’ songs on the record. When we first started with Sony I was trying to make some songs that would get played on the radio in Europe. And this was one of those that I thought would get some airplay.”

“Again, Matt had a hand in that, with Kara (Dioguardi). She’s the girl on ‘American Idol’. I met her a few times. They could hear my soul connection, my love for soul music all over the years. We put a gospel choir in. I think it’s more traditional Cocker than some of the others.”

“Regarding ‘teenage’ lyrics, ‘…tell me your secrets…’ was a little on the edge for me. When making the record, I must have listened to close to five hundred tunes – to get down to ten. We listened to tons of songs. And with ‘So’ there is something about the melody, the notes just woke something up in me that I liked. It was written by Chantal Kreviazuk and Tawgs Salter.”

“This was produced by Tony Brown. I actually recorded this in December last year and I wasn’t sure at the time whether we go with two or three producers. Sometimes that happens. So I went down to Nashville and Tony put a little band together, I can’t remember their names, but they were real classy guys who played on tons of records. It was written by Keb’ Mo’ and the Dixie Chicks and Tony thought they didn’t do the song justice. He thought it needed a second chance. That it was worth reprising. He had already produced the Dixie Chicks version and he thought it should have a better shot.”