Not That One Friday #5: My Way

And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain...

My Way is such a famous song, it's hard to believe that the Beatles were on the verge of breaking up when Frank first recorded it. It feels like it must have been around well before 1969. But the French song, "Comme d'habitude", it was based on was only written two years earlier. The lyrics to that are very different from the ones Paul Anka wrote for Frank though... after old blue eyes told Paul he was quitting the music business because he was sick of it. Talk about a comeback...

Frank apparently came to hate My Way though, and Leonard Cohen only liked Sid Vicious's version. Call me a traditionalist, but I still think Frank's take is unbeatable... although I do have a fondness for Shane MacGowan's version. Not to mention Elvis and Willie. Each one can bring a tear to my eye, if the wind's blowing in the right direction. However, they all follow the same Frank's template... unlike Maxine Weldon, who really took it her own way in 1975...

There are a few songs called My Way in my collection that have nothing to do with the infamous karaoke staple. They were all written long after, and all suffer in comparison...

Kiss - My Way

White Light Motorcade - My Way

Limp Bizkit - My Way

Except this.

Eddie Cochran had been dead almost a decade when Frank first faced his own final curtain. So Eddie had nothing to live up to when he recorded this little beauty in the late 50s...

For the record, Dr Feelgood do a pretty good cover of that My Way too.

Not That One Friday #4: I Will Survive

I forgot all about this feature last week. Probably a sign that I have too many series on the go. Or that the old memory cells are dying off a little quicker now that I'm rapidly approaching the big 5-0.

We had Ofsted in this week. At The Bad Place, that would have been like the Four Horsemen riding in... but at the new place, it was all very calm and civilized.

In the end, the inspector who was supposed to be coming to see us tested positive for Covid, so our side of the service never even got a visit. Somebody high up in a fancy office somewhere lamented the fact that we must all be terribly disappointed...

Gloria Gaynor's glorious empowerment anthem is a peerless disco classic. (Could I get any more superlatives into that sentence?) There are some mighty fine covers of it too, including Cake and REM (although Michael appears to only know half of the lyrics). Gloria is none too fond of them herself though.

Art Brut's entirely different song of the same name really doesn't bear comparison. And Art Brut are such an acquired taste, I hesitate to even mention it. But I love Eddie Argos, so I can forgive him anything... and you can't copyright a title, even if it's iconic.

I'm young and nothing can harm me

I've sold all my records to pay for a party

I'm still drunk, but that's alright

I've been staying out every night

You're always welcome to crash on my floor

There's no key or lock for the door

I'm ignoring my grown-up problems as

I've got no idea how to solve them

 

If you don't care for that, you could always try the completely unrelated I Will Survive by Mötley Crüe. Horses for courses...

Not That One Friday #3: I Got You Babe

Arguably the most famous duet of the 60s, given a whole new lease of life again... and again... and again... in the soundtrack of Groundhog Day, Sonny & Cher's greatest moment is a stone cold classic. Echoing Bill Murray's Groundhog Day moment, Sonny apparently wrote the song late at night and, according to iffypedia, "When Cher was woken up to sing the lyrics, she hated the song and didn't think it would soon be a hit [so] immediately went back to bed".

Laid-back Canadian groover and full-time Prince afficionado, Bahamas, released a collection of "Live To Tape" tracks recorded during Lockdown last year, having roped in Jason Isbell's band The 400 Unit to perform with him remotely from their home in Athens, Georgia. (Other artists also joined him from their hometowns via the internet's version of a can on a string.)

One of the 400 Unit tracks shares its title with the Sonny & Cher hit. It's not quite as iconic, but it's still a great tune...

Not That One Friday #2: No Doubt About It

Remember that time Errol Brown had a Number 2 hit with a song about a Close Encounter of the Third Kind? 

No Doubt About It was that song... yet, perhaps, just like me, you never actually listened that closely to the lyrics and thought it was just another hot, chocolaty love song?

What kind of magnetism kept me in this place?

Was it out of my control?

What was this ship from outer space?

What was this creature that appeared before my eyes?

Was it good?

Was it evil?

On this ship from other skies?

Of course, this being the 80s, if you'd ever seen the video, you wouldn't have been left with much doubt about it...

A hard act to beat, surely?

Unless you're ABBA.

Yes, I'm still very much enjoying that ABBA reunion album, Voyage. And the more I get into it, the more I'm surprised by how many songs on there are about long term relationships struggling to stay together. There's a really maturity to the songwriting that you don't often hear in pure pop songs, which are normally obsessed only with young love.

(There's another song on the album, I Can Be That Woman, which looks at the breakdown of the marriage through the eyes of a pet dog. Which really shouldn't work. Which Sting has already proved really shouldn't work. Except... ABBA show us how it should be done. Bloody incredible that it works, but it does.)

Anyway, here's another mature relationships lyric. This being ABBA, of course, the tune is so upbeat and so poppy, it would be very easy to miss the genius of the lyrics. Just as, for many years, I missed the aliens in the Hot Chocolate.

He says with forbearance in his eyes

Most couples we know are able to compromise

He's too good for me, that's one thing I know for sure

If that's true, why do I let it upset me?

There I go, stomping my feet like a child

But he is a good man

He tries to understand why I freak out

He worries, and I know, it's an honest reaction

I messed it up, alright

And there's no doubt about it

I had to pick this fight

I'd have gone mad without it

Hissing like a wild cat when I should be purring

But you know me

This isn't where it ends

I could make amends

Not That One Friday #1: Nebraska

It's been a long week and I'm feeling pretty knackered, to be honest. The new job is still good, everything is ticking along fine, but I still feel like a hamster on a treadmill sometimes. Like I'm always doing something, you know? I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, as various people have sung over the years.

In the meantime, here's a new series, one I've been toying with for a while, and I'm only kicking it off today because I didn't want to go two whole days without a post. The premise is pretty simple: take a famous song title, then find another equally good (or even better?) tune with the same title.

My opening shot is a bit of a cheat, since the song in question is all about driving around and listening to the song it's named after. If that makes sense.

Allow me to clarify. This is the original, better known song...

 

This is the song that pays tribute to it... by Andrew and Peter Cash. No relation to Johnny.

If I can think of another one, we'll do this again next week. Otherwise, this'll be another of those series I start and never get past the first entry...