Scores My Way

"My Way" is a song popularised in 1969 by Frank Sinatra. Its lyrics were written by Paul Anka and set to the music of the French song "Comme d'habitude", co-composed and co-written (with Jacques Revaux) and performed in 1967 by Claude François. Anka's English lyrics have nothing to do with the original French song. The song was a hit with a variety of performers including Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Sid Vicious. Sinatra's version of "My Way" spent 75 weeks in the UK Top 40, a record that still stands.

Paul Anka heard the original 1967 French pop song, Comme d'habitude, performed by Claude François, while on holiday in the south of France. He travelled to Paris to negotiate the rights to the song. In an interview in 2007, he said: "I thought it was a crap record, but there was something in it."He acquired the adaptation, recording and publishing rights for the simple but formal nominal consideration of one dollar, with the proviso that the composers of the melody retain their original share of copyright in versions created or produced by Anka or his representatives. Some time later, Anka organised a dinner in Florida with Frank Sinatra and "a couple of members of the Mob", during which Sinatra said "I'm mitting the business. I'm sick of it, I'm sick of it; I'm out of here."

Back in New York, Anka rewrote the original French song for Sinatra, subtly altering the melodic structure and lyrics:

"At one in the morning, I sat down in front of an old IBM electric typewriter and said, 'If Frank wrote this, what would he say?' And I began, metaphorically, 'And now the end is nigh. I read a lot of periodicals and noticed that everything was 'my this' and 'my that'. We were part of the 'I generation' and Frank became the man who embodied that. I used words I would never have used: "I ate it and spat it out. But that's how he talked. I was in the steam rooms with the Rat Pack guys - they liked to talk like mobsters, even though they would have been afraid of their own shadows."

Anka finished the song at 5am. "I called Frank in Nevada - he was at Caesar's Palace - and he said, "I've got something really special for you "Anka asserted: "When my record company got wind of it, they were very angry that I didn't keep it to myself. I said, 'I can write it, but I'm not the one who sings it. It was for Frank, nobody else. "Despite this, Anka recorded the song in 1969 (very shortly after the release of the Sinatra recording). Anka has recorded it four other times: in 1996 (as a duet with Gabriel Byrne, in the film Mad Dog Time), in 1998 in Spanish with 'A Mi Manera' (a duet with Julio Iglesias), in 2007 (as a duet with Jon Bon Jovi) and in 2013 (as a duet with Garou).

A few hours before celebrating New Year's Eve at the Casino SANDS, Frank Sinatra recorded his version of the song on 30 December 1968, which was released in early 1969. It reached number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 on the Easy Listening chart in the US. In the UK, the single set an all-time record, becoming the record with the most weeks in the Top 40, spending 75 weeks from April 1969 to September 1971. It spent a further 49 weeks in the Top 75.