Cocker by Joe Cocker

Cocker, Joe Cocker's tenth studio album, arrived in April 1986, and it parks that gravel-pit voice in the glossy, big-drum sound of the mid-'80s, with Bernard Edwards producing. The surprise is how well the old Sheffield blues shouter wears it. His take on "You Can Leave Your Hat On" struts and leers, and once it soundtracked the striptease scene in 9½ Weeks it became a hit, reaching 35 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks; "Don't You Love Me Anymore" followed it out as a single.

The heart of the record, though, is his reading of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues", a lament for crumbling cities that Cocker sings like he's been walking those streets all night. The album is dedicated to his mother, Marjorie, who died while the sessions were under way.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.