My Way

My Way is the thirty-eighth studio album by Frank Sinatra, released on Reprise Records in March 1969. It arrived at a strange moment in Sinatra own career: he had spent the back half of the 1960s trying on the pop and rock songwriting of a much younger generation, and the album mixes contemporary covers, including songs originally recorded by Simon and Garfunkel and the Beatles, with the title track that would come to define the rest of his career.

The record was assembled around the title song, which Sinatra recorded in a single afternoon session on December 30, 1968, under the direction of arranger Don Costa. Critical response to the album on release was mixed, with some writers noting that its brash, self-congratulatory title track sat oddly against the more restrained, vulnerable persona Sinatra had cultivated on earlier records. Commercially, the album performed well, and the title song alone would go on to outstrip nearly everything else in the Sinatra catalog in terms of cultural reach, becoming a fixture at funerals, retirement parties, and karaoke bars worldwide.