Joe Cocker aims for radio hits on his latest album Hard Knocks.
It's a trick question, but see how you go: Who's the odd one out here; Hannah Montana, Britney Spears, Joe Cocker or Justin Bieber? The answer is, of course ... the Bieber boy.
He's the only one who hasn't had a song written for him by former American Idol judge
Kara DioGuardi.
But the real question is, what is 66-year-old soul singer Cocker doing with having not just one, but two, DioGuardi pop co-writes on his new album Hard Knocks?
After all, this is a man whose previous album - the stripped back Hymn for My Soul produced by Ethan John in 2007 - was deeply spiritual.
As good as Hymn For My Soul was - "the biggest record I've had in Britain for years, we did 150,000 copies. Yet it did nothing in the rest of Europe" - Cocker admits he needed to aim for radio with Hard Knocks, his 21st studio album and recorded with pop-rock producer Matt Serletic (Matchbox 20, Collective Soul).
"I interviewed a few producers in LA and really liked Matt and we were trying to make a modern soul record that would get played on European radio; that was the idea when we were going through reams and reams of material."
And among those songs were two which have DioGuardi's name on them. Cocker had met her when he was a guest on American Idol earlier this year.
To her credit as a songwriter-for-hire, and through working with others, she delivered two standouts, the raw ballad Unforgiven (mostly the work of Mitch Allan) and the gospel-influenced Thankful co-written with Serletic.
"She was very funny and came to the session saying, 'You don't have to sing it like that, you know'.
"I was saying, 'You know honey, when you've been singing as long as I have, you do things a certain way'.
"She was trying to get me to do more of a pop thing but she joined the [gospel] chorus.
"I'd really enjoyed the experience of working with Ethan," says the chatty Cocker, just back from pre-Christmas shows around Europe, "and he doesn't like to use any gadgets.
"But then my EMI deal fell through so Sony asked me to make an album for them in Germany. I said, 'What kind of a record do you want?' and they said, 'We want more of a Cocker album'.
"So I thought, 'Oh, I get it'."
Cocker is nothing if not candid: he says European audiences loved Unforgiven when it was played live "but it's an area not everyone likes to hear me sing in.
"I have friends who love to hear me do bluesy material and don't like me going into that big ballad area".
He also offers sales figures (Hymn only did 50,000 in Germany which had always been a good market for him, Hard Knocks has done 100,000) and says the album wasn't even going to be released in Britain by the local arm of Sony there.
"In England they don't like this new one, maybe because I didn't do any promotion for it ," he laughs.
"It was like an afterthought.
"Sony was a separate entity there and didn't want to put it out so it got shoved to the back of the queue.
"So I did a whole month of running around Europe the old-fashioned way where you go to each radio station, and it's tough when you get to my age - although I'm told not to mention age in interviews."
In a thick German accent he says "They don't vant to hear you talking about gettink older".
But he does anyway, considers his albums "like picture books for people to know I'm healthy and putting out some songs" and that with Hard Knocks he was "trying to make a radio album that would get played in the middle of all the modern sounds that are going on".
"But I couldn't believe when we started how many slow tunes were sent to me. I'm talking 45 out of the 50 were slow.
"When they suggest to writers my name they tend to think big ballads like You Are So Beautiful or whatever. It's hard to find modern r&b that isn't straight 12-bar."
The more radio-directed, pop-rock sound of Hard Knocks is certainly working in Europe: "It went number one in Hungary and the oddest places.
"We do incredibly well in the Ukraine, Poland and Russia. They just like my voice and over the years I've been lucky enough to have hits that have stuck in people's minds and relate to time periods."
But, laughing again about his age, he says he still wants to do a blues album... which he's been warned would only sell 6000 copies.
"But one like those old London sessions where Jerry Lee Lewis would get all those English cats together.
"You get Eric [Clapton] and Jeff Beck ... and that would be a nice way to make an album, just really great songs and do it live.
"But I better hurry because, well, we're all ..."
Lowdown
Where: Mud House Winery & Cafe, Amberley, Sat 22 Jan; TSB Bank Arena, Wgton, January 25; Auckland Vector Arena, January 27; Bowl of Brooklands, New Plymouth January 28, Church Road Winery, Napier, January 29
Trivia: Sheffield-born Cocker and his American wife Pam have lived in Colorado since 1995 where their Cocker Kids Foundation, established in 1998, helping needy children.
