“My Way” is a song popularized in 1969 by Frank Sinatra set to the music of the French song “Comme d’habitude”. In 1967, Jacques Revaux wrote a ballad named “For Me”, with English lyrics about a couple falling out of love. According to Revaux, the demo was then sent to Petula Clark, Dalida and Claude Francois, to no avail. Revaux rejected a version by Herve Villard and reworked the track into Comme d’habitude (“As usual”) with the help of Claude François. It was released in November 1967 and was at the top of the French pop chart for one week in February 1968.
Paul Anka heard the French original, while on holiday in the south of France. He flew to Paris to negotiate the rights to the song. He acquired adaptation, recording, and publishing rights for the nominal but formal consideration of one dollar. Back in New York, Anka re-wrote the original French song for Sinatra, subtly altering the melodic structure and changing the lyrics. Anka finished the song at 5 in the morning: “I called Frank up in Nevada—he was at Caesars Palace – and said, ‘I’ve got something really special for you.'” Anka asserted: “When my record company caught wind of it, they were very annoyed 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.”
In December 1968, Frank Sinatra recorded his version of the song in one take, featuring session drummer Buddy Saltzman among the band. “My Way” was released in early 1969 as a single. It reached No. 27 on the Billboard chart and No. 2 on the Easy Listening chart in the US. In the UK, the single became the first record to spend 75 weeks inside the Top 40, 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.
Although this work became Frank Sinatra’s signature song, his daughter Tina says the singer came to hate the song: “He didn’t like it. That song stuck and he couldn’t get it off his shoe. He always thought that song was self-serving and self-indulgent.”
The song was a success for a variety of performers including Dorothy Squires, Elvis Presley, and Sid Vicious. In December 2019 footage of Margaret Mackie, a resident of Northcare Suites Care Home in Edinburgh who suffers from dementia, performing “My Way” with staff member Jamie Lee Morley, went viral after being posted online by Mackie’s daughter.
