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Frank Sinatra, “My Way” (Claude François)

If you think that French culture is old-school and can’t cross the borders, we are sorry to say that you are totally wrong. The peeps at the Institut français in Edinburgh have take on the challenge to show you just how inspirational French songs can be for Anglophones singers.

In the history of music, break-ups are good pretexts to write beautiful but harrowing love songs. “Comme d’habitude” is just one more example of this. After a 3 year relationship, Claude François and France Gall spilt up (guess why). Some said that this break-up inspired Claude François’ 1967 “Comme d’habitude”. In this song he describes the everyday life of a couple slowly splitting up… “Tout seul j'irai me coucher / Dans ce grand lit froid / Comme d'habitude / Mes larmes, je les cacherai / Comme d'habitude ».

The first Anglophone singer asked to adapt this song is an unexpected one… Ladies and Gentlemen, Mister David Bowie! In 1968 the rock star-to-be was just at the start of his career when he tried to cover it. Results: An unfinished and unreleased title, “Even a Fool Learns to Love”. But as Bowie’s imagination never stops (oui, we love him!), he decided to reuse the “Comme d’habitude”’s chord chart in his famous “Life On Mars”.

The one who popularised the song was the grand, the marvellous, the inimitable Frank Sinatra, with an adaptation by Canadian songwriter and artist Paul Anka. By having a greater charts success than the original by Claude François, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” is certainly the most known cover EVER.

Nevertheless, it’s important to note that the lyrics of “My Way” are not just a translation of “Comme d’habitude”. The French version is all about a separating couple, whereas in Anka’s one we’ve got a guy trying to draw conclusions about his own life.

Whatever the words are about, the sure thing is that Frank Sinatra gives us here a truly powerful song. And in the light of Sinatra’s tumultuous life, we can only imagine how personal this could have been. Thank you, Frank, for magnifying our sometimes cheesy-let’s-talk-about-love-baby-culture.

So in all our biased way, this is probably the best cover of all time. And as all brilliant covers, it’s been itself covered many many times (are you still following us here?) and those are pretty good too (in their own way).

Here’s our Top 5:

1. the always classy and caliente Nina Simone;

2. the King of I’ll-just-put-my-leg-here Elvis Presley;

3. Shawn Corey Carter aka Jay-Z or when a hip-hop king samples another king;

4. Filling the punk quota of this post: Sid Vicious.

5. The romantic, funny-but-a-bit-bad-boy with charming eyes Robbie Williams.

As we said, this is one of the most covered cover song of all time so we could go on for ever with that list. But we thought we’d hand the microphone to you: how would you have this top five your way?

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