While his new album, Better Days, arrived in stores on Tuesday, Joe has started working on another LP that he promises will come "sooner rather than later."

"I started already," Joe said of the record late last month. He hopes it will be an album of duets reminiscent of when "Marvin [Gaye] did the Tammi Terrell thing."

Joe named Faith Evans, Mary J. Blige, and Alicia Keys on his list of potential partners in the studio. "I'm going to get everybody," he said. "Mariah [Carey], the whole nine. I want an album like that. Eve — I'm a have hip-hop as well."

Making beautiful music with a soulmate outside the studio, however, doesn't appear to be on the horizon for the lovelorn singer/songwriter.

"The more I go, it seems like I need love," he lamented. "But at times I don't want it, then I want it. I'm confused right now. I really don't know. I think that's the hardest thing for me, knowing what I want, and it's probably gonna be too late [when I figure it out]. They might be here and I might overlook them. Then I'm gonna be a lonely, 50-something-year-old man, without somebody to love and nobody to love me.

"It's really hard for me to see through a person — if they really love me for who I am," he continued. "It's exciting to be with a celebrity. I want that regular person, though."

Better Days is the follow-up to last year's My Name Is Joe, which has sold nearly 2.5 million copies to date, according to SoundScan (see [article id="1451246"]"Joe Gets Caught Crushin', Envisions Being A Woman On Better Days"[/article]).