This Is My Song (1967 song)

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"This is My Song"
Single by Petula Clark
from the album 'These Are My Songs'
B-side(s)	"High" (US)/"The Show is Over" (UK)
Released	February 1967
Recorded	1966
Label	Warner Bros.(US)/Pye (UK)/Vogue (France)
Writer(s)	Charlie Chaplin
Producer(s)	Tony Hatch
Chart positions
1 (UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Italy, South Africa, Rhodesia), 3 (US), 5 (India)
Petula Clark singles chronology
"Colour My World"	"This is My Song"	"Don't Sleep in the Subway"

This Is My Song was an international hit song for British singer Petula Clark (and in the UK for Harry Secombe). It was composed by Charlie Chaplin as the instrumental theme for his 1967 film A Countess from Hong Kong, which starred Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. When he added lyrics, he decided to offer the song to Al Jolson to record, unaware that the entertainer had long been deceased. Finally convinced of the fact only after seeing a photograph of Jolson's tomb, Chaplin presented it instead to his neighbor in Switzerland, Petula Clark.

Clark recorded it in French, Italian, and German, but found the English lyrics to be insipid and overly sentimental, and only after considerable pressure did she agree to release it in English as well. Despite Clark's misgivings, "This is My Song" became an immediate international best-seller: in her native UK, she topped the charts for the first time in six years, in Canada the French and English versions occupied the #1 and #2 slots, and it was a huge hit in the USA, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Rhodesia, and India. To this day, Clark includes the song - usually in a mix of English and French - in her concert repertoire.

Of note, it was Clark's first single in nearly three years to have been written by someone other than Tony Hatch.

Her 1983 biogaphy by Andrea Kon takes its book title from the song: This is My Song: A Biography of Petula Clark.

The song was also a UK chart hit for Harry Secombe, reaching #2 in 1967.