Everything I need to know about surreal musical collisions I learned from mall food-court background music.

Last night I was at the mall, sitting by the Sbarro's, when something caught my attention in the midst of the bland jazzy ballad that was playing.

No, I must have imagined it. Sometimes one's brain can subconsciously attach patterns & meaning to something just to try to recognize it, but... Wait, there it is again.

I needed a witness. So I called Pax.

"Quick musical question for you. To the best of your knowledge, did Tony Bennett ever do a cover of the Soundgarden song 'Black Hole Sun'?"

In my experience, those words had never been strung together in the same sentence before. But if this song was really out there, then perhaps that was my fault.

As it turns out, it wasn't Tony B, but Paul Anka. It's from his album "Rock Swings", full of similarly incongruous big-band covers of modern songs. And since we live in the age of iTunes, 5 minutes after learning that, I own a copy of it.

In looking up some details about Paul Anka on Wikipedia, I happened upon a link to "The Guys Get Shirts", a surreptitiously recorded, profanity-laced tirade that Anka once leveled at his musicians after a show. It's full of great lines like "When I move, I slice like a [bleep]in' hammer." Very funny stuff.

But even beyond all that, I think my favorite part was when I started listening to the album and heard track 1, the Bon Jovi song "It's My Life". Now, with all the Bon Jovi songs out there, why not go for an earlier, more iconic one like "Livin' On A Prayer" or "You Give Love A Bad Name"? Then he got to this couplet from the original Bon Jovi lyrics:

"My heart is like an open highway / Like Frankie said, I did it my way"

Except the Paul Anka version changed that second line slightly: "Frank said, he did it my way".

The main difference is just a pronoun, and it seems pretty subtle, but it's hugely important when you realize that Frank Sinatra's signature song, "My Way", was actually written by Paul Anka. Thus, "Frank said, he [Frank] did it my [Paul's] way."

He really does slice like a hammer. Or hit like a knife. Or whatever.