For many, I’m sure, this is a song that needs no introduction.

After hearing a few bars of the song’s melody, or one stanza of the song’s lyrics, it is, to many people, instantly recognizable.

Photo Source: Pixabay

My Way

A song that has been sung many times by many people, both famous and not famous. A Real Man’s song. A boastful song about living a life unhesitant and without apology.

At least, that’s what I thought for the longest time.

---

I’ve lived a life that’s full
I’ve traveled each and every highway
But more, much more than this
I did it my way

---

Then I heard a woman sing it in Japan.

It was an unlikely moment. I was walking across the living room of a friend’s house. Children were running under my feet and screaming. Toys were strewn all over the floor. I was stepping over them carefully, absent-mindedly having a light conversation about work when that old, familiar melody slowly began catching my attention.

I knew the music, or at least I felt like I did, and yet I didn’t. Something was very familiar about it and odd at the same time. I could almost sing along with it. I could almost recall the name of the song. But I couldn’t.

The voice was different. It was soft. The English was accented, and the tone of the instruments wasn't the same. It somehow felt colder than usual, slightly numbing. Yet, it worked.

I got the chills.

---

Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption

---

After another verse of the song, it dawned on me. I was listening to My Way.

But it seemed so improbable. To be in Japan, so far from America, so far from the Frank Sinatras, the Elvis Presleys, and the Sammy Davis Juniors, so far from everything I associated with the song, listening to a Japanese woman singing My Way took me by complete surprise.

It transformed the song for me.

I had always thought of My Way as being a man’s song, a braggart’s song. One that any proud man could stand up and sing pompously without acknowledging the people he’s slighted or the trouble he’s caused. But now, having heard Yen Town Band’s version of it, My Way seems much more like a song of defiance, one that was written more for women than for men, one that was written for people who have the strength to stand up and look their detractors in the eye, for people who have the courage to stand tall in the midst of any criticism.

---

For what is a [woman], what has [she] got
If not [herself], then [she] has naught
To say the things [she] truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way

---

As it turns out, there are many women who have sung this song in the past, many legendary female artists like Nina Simone and Arethra Franklin. I’m sure that I’ve heard their versions before, but I never realized it.

There’s something about Yen Town Band’s version that really gets to me. Maybe it has to do with the odd juxtaposition that comes from hearing something that was once so familiar to me out of context, and in a place and time so far from the place and time that I previously knew it.

Have a listen. See what you think.

Tell me if this version of My Way reminds you of a slightly out of place song, one that a DJ would play in the middle of his/her set, well into the early hours of the morning when everyone is reaching that stage of intoxication where the body begins to feel like it is coming back into sobriety and things feel both fuzzy and clear, energetic and sluggish.

Tell me if it reminds you of one of those songs where, in a strange place and an odd time, everyone suddenly comes together and feels as one. Because that’s how it makes me feel.