CHRIS CORNELL's Upcoming Solo Album To Feature MICHAEL JACKSON Cover

AUDIOSLAVE/ex-SOUNDGARDEN frontman Chris Cornell told MTV.com that his upcoming second solo studio LP will feature his cover of MICHAEL JACKSON's 1982 hit "Billie Jean".

"I didn't plan on it," he said. "It just sort of happened organically. I changed the music quite a bit, I didn't touch the lyrics. And it's not a joke. I took a completely different approach to it, musically. It's like when Johnny Cash did [the SOUNDGARDEN song] 'Rusty Cage', " on Cash's 1996 LP "Unchained", "and people started calling me and leaving messages saying, 'I heard the JOHNNY CASH version and the lyrics are really, really great.' No one ever told me that before. Ever. Not once. This is kind of like that. It does that to this song, because it's really an emotional song.

"The lyrical content is kind of panicky, because — well, it's a pretty bad thing, someone coming and lying to you, saying you're the father of their kid and you're not."

Cornell, who began recording the LP four weeks ago and is just about finished with it, said one song — "She'll Never Be Your Man" — tells the story of a guy "whose woman leaves him for another woman, which is sort of hard to deal with because men know how to compete with other men for something like a woman and a relationship."

Not that Cornell's speaking from experience. "I know a couple of different people who were married and their wives left them for women," he explained. "It's like a special kind of weird dis, in a way. It's never happened to me, but just in thinking about it and hearing stories about it, it's like, 'Maybe I was so bad, not only did she dump me, she gave up men entirely?' "

Reaad more at MTV.com.