It's Not Unusual

It's Not Unusual: Creation, Recording, and Chart History

"It's Not Unusual" was written in late 1964 by Gordon Mills and Les Reed, two British songwriters who had been working together in London's increasingly competitive pop music industry. The song was originally composed with Welsh-born singer Sandie Shaw in mind, and a demonstration recording was prepared for her consideration. Shaw declined the track, a decision that would prove pivotal in the trajectory of another Welsh artist's career.

Tom Jones, born Thomas John Woodward in Pontypridd, Wales, in 1940, had been performing in clubs and small venues throughout South Wales for several years under the stage name Tommy Scott. Gordon Mills, who had grown up near Jones and was familiar with his powerful baritone voice, recognized immediately that the demo song suited Jones far better than almost any material then being circulated in London's song-publishing offices. Mills had become Jones's manager and was actively seeking a vehicle that would showcase the raw, gospel-inflected power of his client's voice.

The recording session for "It's Not Unusual" took place at Decca Studios in London in late 1964. Producer Peter Sullivan oversaw the session, and the arrangement by Les Reed gave the track a lush, brassy sound typical of the mid-1960s British pop style, driven by punchy brass stabs and a swinging rhythm section. The production was energetic and radio-ready, built to capture attention on the airwaves immediately. Jones's vocal performance was physically commanding, conveying both urgency and emotional largeness in a way that set him apart from the smoother crooners of the era.

Decca Records released the single in the United Kingdom in January 1965. The song's ascent on the UK charts was rapid and decisive: it debuted strongly and climbed to number one on the UK Singles Chart within weeks of release, making Tom Jones an overnight sensation in Britain. The success attracted immediate international attention, and the single was licensed for distribution in the United States through London Records, a subsidiary of Decca operating in the American market.

On the Billboard Hot 100, "It's Not Unusual" debuted at number 90 on April 10, 1965. The chart climb was consistent and impressive, moving to 75 the following week, then 48, then 28. By early May it had reached number 22 and continued pressing upward. The single achieved its peak position of number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the chart week of May 29, 1965, spending a total of 12 weeks on the chart. The performance was strong for a British artist breaking into the American market at a time when the British Invasion had already established a template but was still very much an ongoing cultural phenomenon.

The single also performed well on the Adult Contemporary chart, where Jones's rich voice found a receptive audience among listeners who favored sophisticated pop over the more stripped-down rock and roll sound. Radio programmers in both the United States and the United Kingdom embraced the track enthusiastically, and it received extensive airplay throughout spring 1965.

The commercial breakthrough established Tom Jones as an international star at the age of twenty-four and set the template for his career arc as an artist who could straddle the line between rock energy and cabaret-style showmanship. Gordon Mills's management strategy of placing Jones at the center of a big-band-inflected pop sound proved commercially astute, differentiating Jones from the guitar-driven groups who dominated the British Invasion while still appealing to the same youth audiences.

The song appeared on Jones's debut album, Along Came Jones, released in 1965 on Decca in the UK and on London Records in the United States. The album benefited enormously from the single's chart success and served to introduce Jones's wider vocal range and interpretive abilities to audiences who had encountered him only through the single.

In the decades following its original release, "It's Not Unusual" became one of the most enduring signatures of 1960s pop music. It was the subject of high-profile placements in film and television, most notably its use in the American sitcom Carlton parody sketch in the 1990s, which introduced the song to entirely new generations of listeners. Tom Jones returned to performing the track at virtually every live engagement throughout his career, and the recording remained in print continuously from its original release. By the twenty-first century it had accumulated tens of millions of streams and had been covered and sampled by artists across multiple genres, cementing its status as a foundational document of British popular music in the 1960s.