Paul Anka wrote My Way, a song made famous by Frank Sinatra but also mangled by thousands of karaoke singers, Sid Vicious and more recently Robbie Williams. While he undoubtedly profitted financially from all those terrible covers, it must have been galling to hear talentless schmucks like Williams trying to copy Sinatra on the song. So, perhaps Rock Swings is his revenge, not that there are any Robbie songs on here, although that could be on purpose.

Instead, Anka (a pretty legendary singer as well as songwriter, let's not forget) turns his attention to the unlikely sources of Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Spandau Ballet for cover songs.

He kicks off with It's My Life by the Jovi, which is a fair enough choice as it namechecks My Way a couple of times and the lyrics do sound surprisingly at home in a big band setting.

Thankfully, Anka hasn't tried to sing the songs like they were originally done (who would want to hear a crooner do an impersonation of Kurt Cobain?), instead converting them into swing tunes, with unsurprisingly mixed results. Spandau Ballet's True already sounded a bit like a crooner song, so the transformation is fairly seamless there, though Eye Of The Tiger is just plain awful.

REM's Everybody Hurts also falls flat, despite some nice moments, but much better is his cover of Wonderwall, which sounds like nothing Noel Gallagher could have imagined when he wrote it. The big band approach really works well and provides a welcome antithesis to Ryan Adams' elegaic reinterpretation of the song from last year. Sometimes cover versions are worthwhile, you see.

Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun also sounds pretty good, although Anka struggles slightly with Chris Cornell's lyrics, which sound a little bit daft when enunciated clearly. God only knows what it all means. He has the same problem with Smells Like Teen Spirit, giving it a lot of gusto but obviously not having a clue why he's singing about 'a mulatto, an albini, a mousquito, my libido'.

The process of singing pop and rock songs in a swing fashion can bring out hitherto unknown aspects to those songs, with the Pet Shop Boys' It's A Sin sounding very mournful and Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel sounding like it was written to be performed like this. It is a very brave endeavour for Anka, who probably doesn't have to work a day in his life, and will be hated as much as loved, but it's never less than interesting.