Joe’s last album Joe Thomas, New Man was one of my favorite albums last year. But at the same time, the five snippets at the end of the album left me longing even more for his next CD, Signature. Signature was supposed to drop earlier this year but has been delayed. Now it seems as if the new release date will be June 30th and if Joe sticks to his original plan, the album will be filled with ballads written and produced by himself. In my opinion this is the right move to make for a singer who’s also one of the most underrated songwriters in the business.

Joe made three great albums between ’97 and ’01 where he wrote most of the songs himself. Since then, he has been letting a lot of other people do most of the work for him and though Joe never really fails, he certainly hasn’t made a really great album for almost a decade now.

I’m not going to say that ‘Magic’ is anywhere near being magical, but it’s surely a step in the right direction, and as an album track it’s great. Hopefully Joe will put out something more like ‘I Wanna Know’ or ‘All The Things (Your Man Won’t Do)’ to get a little more hype for the new album. I guess we just have to wait and see.

Joe - Magic

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