MY WAY
By Mahnuel Muñoz
The spring of 1969 welcomes an autumn-leaf-wearing Sinatra.
Today we know that he will still give another quarter of a century of music and images without equal, but in those days, when he sings in “My Way” that ” And ow, the end is near and so I face the final curtain“, he believes it TRUE. His records sell less and less, the world around him seems strange to him, devoid of the values in which he has always believed. His breakup with Mia Farrow has caused him great pain. The generational gap has been unbridgeable even for the all-powerful Frank…Or not so all-powerful. Time is relentless with his face, his hands, his energy… his voice…
He does not accept his mortal status and mulls over the idea of withdrawing from him. The shadow of “goodbye and amen” flies over each groove of the album “My Way“, an album, in principle, built around the piece that gives it its title, with contemporary material from diverse sources and arrangements by Don Costa. But each note, each word, reveal bitterness and melancholy due to the time he spends digging his nails in.
“Didn’t We” and “If You Go Away” seem to come from the very center of Frank’s sadness over his failed relationship with Mia Farrow.
The emotional version of “All My Tomorrows“, a song that he recorded a decade ago for his film “A Hole In The Head“, seems like a hand extended to a love that is yet to come, asking him to believe in a happy future to share.
His forays into the pop of the era in which he lived are sometimes brilliant, other times disconcerting, but always surprising. They are never empty. And on this album we have everything: “Mrs.Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel and “Hallelujah! I Love her so” are mere diversions that, in the process, try to bring The Voice closer to a younger audience. But “Yesterday” is a moving and sincere reading of Paul McCartney‘s recurring theme, which undoubtedly captures Sinatra’s longing for simpler, happier days. “For Once In My Life” is Frank’s salute to the Motown sound, with a fabulous arrangement that leaves the suit attached to the workmanship of Hoboken‘s favorite son. The lyrics (“For once in my life I have someone who needs me“) is a bitter irony given his extensive history of lovemaking and that at that precise moment he found himself alone and with a mended heart.
And of course, “My Way“, about which little can be said. Loved and hated, its greatest value is what it has evoked in people for more than half a century. It is a melody that has become a personal anthem for many who serve as relief and inspiration in difficult times. Frank Sinatra probably hated it – I have expressed my doubts about that – but he owed it a lot and that’s why he never stopped singing it at his concerts. And their broken versions from the nineties were the best because they were more loaded with truth than ever.
In the United States the album reached eleventh place on the charts and lived there for nineteen weeks. In the United Kingdom things were much better: no less than a second place.
Today the album “My Way” is emotional and profound as it never was in Frank’s life. It documents one of the most difficult stages in the life and work of a man who, following the maps he himself drew, came to forget that he was human.
TRACK LIST
1 “Watch What Happens” (Norman Gimbel, Michel Legrand, Jacques Demy) – 2:17
2 “Didn’t We?” (Jimmy Webb) – 2:55
3 “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” (Ray Charles) – 2:47
4 “Yesterday” (Lennon–McCartney) – 3:56
5 “All My Tomorrows” (Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen) – 4:35
6 “My Way” (Paul Anka, Claude François, Jacques Revaux, Gilles Thibault) – 4:35
7 “A Day in the Life of a Fool” (Luiz Bonfá, Carl Sigman) – 3:00
8 “For Once in My Life” (Ron Miller, Orlando Murden) – 2:50
9 “If You Go Away” (Jacques Brel, Rod McKuen) – 3:30
10 “Mrs. Robinson” (Paul Simon) – 2:55
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