UNITED KINGDOM: Old crooner Paul Anka has gone hip with swing versions of rock songs

Paul Anka's astonishing career spans over more than four decades. His signature song "Diana" brought him a Number One hit at the tender age of 16. He penned Frank Sinatra's hit "My Way" catapulting the singer's career and has been named the 21st most successful artist in Billboard's history, putting him alongside Elvis Presley and The Beatles. This month sees the launch of Anka's latest work - his own swing versions of rock music's raunchiest bad boys. It might raise a few eyebrows at first, but the old crooner has once again proved that his skills are as strong as ever. To anyone who's uncertain about "Rock Swings", Anka's response is simple: "A great song is a great song, and there are some good songs that were written in the 80s and 90s and it's always dawned on me that if you just to ok a great song, no matter what it was or where it came from , that if you put it in the swing genre, that it would work." "Rock Swings" is a compilation of Number One rock and pop songs from the 80s and 90s revamped in a different genre. Greats like Van Halen's "Jump", Nirvana's "Smells like Teen spirit" , and Billy Idol's "Eyes without a face" get the Anka make-over on this album. "You take all these kids today Robbie Williams and Buble who are taking these old standards which have nothing to do with them. I mean they're singing lyrics that are older than they are, there's no equation for them to identify with them. So if they are allowed to do that and make it real then I think someone that's done it for years can take new young music and say, you guys that are 18, 19 and grew up on it how about we take it and put it in a different pocket for you and let you identify with your own music." says Anka. With well over 900 songs to his credit, his songs have been performed by some of the biggest names in music history. Now, it's the songwriter who sings someone else's songs, and for Anka that's just about fine. "It's refreshing for me because I've written a lot of words and a lot of stuff in my life, I look at myself as an interpreter of songs , certainly there is a comfort zone within the old material but it's not impossible to do other stuff that motivates you as an artist it's not unlike an actor who writes his own material or takes some kind of director path with it , a lot of them grew up and like to do other good work. I'm still motivated by the music, the music is the rhythms and the band and I understand these songs in that I approached them as if I wrote them - it's not like a singer that doesn't have a writing capability , there's a different technique." "Rock Swings" is released in the UK this month.

ITN Source | October 6, 2005

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