Tom Jones - Somethin' 'Bout You Baby I Like (1974)

Somethin' 'Bout You Baby I Like evokes the country-inspired pop of previous Tom Jones hits like "Green Green Grass of Home" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," but the end result fails to match past creative and commercial peaks. The songs are uniformly bland, with few if any of the dramatic flourishes that Jones relishes, and Johnny Spence's arrangements are atypically flat, adding little to the mellow ballads and tepid pop grooves. Listeners who stick it out through all ten tracks are nevertheless rewarded by the closer, an earthy rendition of Dr. John's "Right Place, Wrong Time" that's perfectly calibrated to Jones' prowess as a blue-eyed soul belter par excellence.