My Way

"My Way" is a song popularized by Frank Sinatra. Its lyrics were written by Paul Anka and set to music based on the French song "Comme d'habitude" co-composed, co-written and performed in 1967 by Claude François. Anka's English lyrics are unrelated to the original French song.

Background

Paul Anka heard the original 1967 French pop song, Comme d'habitude (As Usual) performed by Claude François, while on holiday in the south of France. He flew to Paris to negotiate the rights to the song.^[1] In a 2007 interview, he said, "I thought it was a bad record, but there was something in it."^[2] He acquired adaptation, recording, and publishing rights for the mere nominal or formal consideration of one dollar,^[3] subject to the provision that the melody's composers would retain their original share of royalty rights with respect to whatever versions Anka or his designates created or produced.^[4] Some time later, Anka had a dinner in Florida with Frank Sinatra and "a couple of Mob guys" during which Sinatra said "I'm quitting the business. I'm sick of it; I'm getting the hell out."^[2]

Back in New York, Anka re-wrote the original French song for Sinatra, subtly altering the melodic structure and changing the lyrics:

"At one o'clock in the morning, I sat down at an old IBM electric typewriter and said, 'If Frank were writing this, what would he say?' And I started, metaphorically, 'And now the end is near.' I read a lot of periodicals, and I noticed everything was 'my this' and 'my that'. We were in the 'me generation' and Frank became the guy for me to use to say that. I used words I would never use: 'I ate it up and spit it out.' But that's the way he talked. I used to be around steam rooms with the Rat Pack guys – they liked to talk like Mob guys, even though they would have been scared of their own shadows."

Anka finished the song at 5 am. "I called Frank up in Nevada – he was at Caesar's Palace – and said, 'I've got something really special for you.'"^[2] Anka claimed, "When my record company caught wind of it, they were very pissed that I didn't keep it for myself. I said, 'Hey, I can write it, but I'm not the guy to sing it.' It was for Frank, no one else."^[2] Despite this, Anka would later record the song in 1969 (very shortly after Sinatra's recording was released). Anka recorded it four other times as well: in 1996 (as a duet with Gabriel Byrne, performed in the movie Mad Dog Time), in 1998 in Spanish as (a Mi Manera) (duet with Julio Iglesias), in 2007 (as a duet with Jon Bon Jovi) ^[5] and in 2013 (as duet with Garou).^[6]

Frank Sinatra recorded his version of the song on December 30, 1968, and it was released in early 1969 on the album of the same name and as a single. It reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 2 on the Easy Listening chart in the US. In the UK, the single achieved a still unmatched record, becoming the recording with the most weeks inside the Top 40, spending 75 weeks from April 1969 to September 1971. It spent a further 49 weeks in the Top 75 but never bettered the No. 5 slot achieved upon its first chart run.^[7]

Charts

Certifications

Versions

Dorothy Squires version

In the midst of Sinatra's multiple runs on the UK Singles Chart, Welsh singer Dorothy Squires also released a rendition of "My Way" in Summer 1970. Her recording reached number 10 on the UK Singles Chart and re-entered the chart twice more during that year.

Elvis Presley version

Elvis Presley began performing the song in concert during the mid-1970s, in spite of suggestions by Paul Anka, who told him it was not a song that would suit him. Nevertheless, on January 12 and 14, 1973 Presley sang the song during his satellite show Aloha from Hawaii, beamed live and on deferred basis (for European audiences, who also saw it in prime time), to 43 countries via Intelsat.

On October 3, 1977, several weeks after Presley's death, his live recording of "My Way" (recorded for the Elvis In Concert CBS-TV special on June 21, 1977) was released as a single. In the U.S.A., it reached number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart in late-1977/early-1978 (higher than Frank Sinatra's peak position), number 6 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, and went Gold for its successful sales of over half a million copies. The following year the single reached number 2 on the Billboard Country singles chart but went all the way to number 1 on the rival Cash Box Country Singles chart. In the UK, it reached number 9 on the UK Singles Chart.

Certifications

Sid Vicious version

Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious did a punk rock version of the song. This version, in which a large body of the words were changed and the arrangement was sped up, charted at No. 7 in the UK in 1978. The orchestral backing was arranged by Simon Jeffes.

Interviewed in 2007, Paul Anka said he had been "somewhat destabilized by the Sex Pistols' version. It was kind of curious, but I felt he (Sid Vicious) was sincere about it."^[2]

Vicious did not know all the lyrics to the song when it was recorded, so he improvised several lyrics, including use of the swear words cunt and fuck.^[15] Vicious' reference to a "prat who wears hats" was an in-joke directed towards Vicious' friend and Sex Pistols band-mate Johnny Rotten, who was fond of wearing different kinds of hats he would pick up at rummage sales.

An edited version of Vicious cover is played during the closing credits of the films Goodfellas and Juan of the Dead. A snippet of the song is also heard at the end of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Lovers Walk", as part of a running joke about vampire Spike's enjoyment of the Sex Pistols, as well as a reference to a snippet of the Frank Sinatra version that played at the beginning. It is also heard in the television commercial for the 2015 Acura TLX.

In her album The End, released in conjunction with the film Nana 2, singer and actress Mika Nakashima performs a cover of Sid Vicious' version of the song with what sounds like an audience singing background vocals.

In the film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle the original footage for the track shows Sid Vicious at the end taking out a hand gun and opening fire on the audience, hitting two of the audience members. Sid then sneers, throws the gun away, and flicks the Vs at the audience and ascends the staircase he walked down to the stage from. This was alluded to in the final shot of Goodfellas, when a flashback shows Joe Pesci's character firing directly into the camera, while Vicious' version of the song starts up. For the music video version, director Julien Temple removed the original footage featuring actors playing the audience and the final graphic violence and replaced a few of the audience cutaways with stock footage of a theatre audience from the 1950s (he also drowned out Sid's use of the F-word in the third verse with audience applause). Although the censored version was still controversial, it merely showed Sid wildly shooting a gun towards the crowd. All of the footage of the bullet impacts and corpses were removed. The music video was recreated for director Alex Cox's film Sid and Nancy, with the final person Sid (Gary Oldman) shooting girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb), eerily foreshadowing her alleged murder at Sid's hands. However, in the film, she gets up and the two embrace as the stage lights are turned off.

Chris Mann version

In 2012 Anka revised the lyrics of the song for Chris Mann's debut album Roads. In Mann's version the song is presented from the perspective of a young man looking to the future instead of an older man reflecting on his life.

Other versions

In 1970 British singer Samantha Jones won the music festival held in Belgian Knokke-Heist with a version of "My Way", which subsequently reached #4 on the Dutch charts.

The Pogues' Shane MacGowan recorded a punk cover of the song, reaching No. 29 on the UK singles chart.

Dutch singer and painter Herman Brood covered the song. It was part of his posthumous greatest hits album My Way (2001). The title song was released on single and became his first No. 1 single in the Dutch top 40.

In 1968, then-unknown singer/songwriter David Bowie was asked by his music publisher to write English lyrics for the original French song. As Bowie relates on his VH1 Storytellers live album, his version, Even a Fool Learns to Love, was "rejected out of hand, quite rightly, I feel," and was never recorded. Later, he reworked the chords of the French song and turned it into Life on Mars?, a track on his 1971 album Hunky Dory, and included the note "inspired by Frankie" (referring to My Way singer Frank Sinatra) in the liner notes.^[16]

The Three Tenors performed this song in their 1994 Los Angeles concert while Sinatra looked on from the front row.

In culture

• "My Way" was found to be the song most frequently played at British funeral services.^[17]
• "My Way" is a popular karaoke song around the world, to the point that it has been reported to cause numerous incidents of violence and homicides among drunkards in bars in the Philippines, referred in the media as the "My Way Killings".^[18][19]
• The song was spoofed on Sesame Street as "Just Throw It My Way", Oscar the Grouch's anti-litter anthem. Oscar laments that he hates to see trash all over the place figuring that it's going to waste. Instead he urges Muppet boys and girls to throw it his way, right into his trash can.^[20]
• A Spanish version of the song featured in the animated film Happy Feet as sung by actor/comedian Robin Williams
• "My Way" and Frank Sinatra are mentioned in the Bon Jovi song It's My Life

References

External links

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics