Claude Francois: Comme d'Habitude

Claude François:

Comme d'Habitude

Comme d’Habitude (As Usual), 1967

In 1967, French composer Jacques Revaux composed music with English lyrics by Gilles Thibault for a song in English that they named “For me.” A remarkable thread of connected events subsequently led from Revaux's "For me" to Claude François’s “Comme d’habitude” and then to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and finally to David Bowie’s “Life on Mars.” The history of these songs represents a dramatic transformation of musical fortune by adapting lyrics along with a measure of luck. A side-by-side table of lyrics for "My Way," "Comme d'habitude" and a translation of the latter is available here.

The Evolution of a Song

Revaux was unhappy with the initial formulation of “For Me” and in August that year he visited Claude François poolside at his elaborate estate southeast of Paris that was called “Le Moulin de Dannemois.” Together, they wrote new lyrics named "Comme d'habitude" that reflected the recent breakup of Claude’s short-lived relationship with teen singer France Gall.

Claude & France

Claude and France had met in 1964 and they began dating when she was 16 years old. He was 25 and married since 1960 to French-British dancer Janet Woollacott. Janet left Claude in 1962, however, and they divorced in 1967. Claude was a star and had headlined in 1963 at the Paris Olympia music hall while France was a neophyte in the vanguard of the teenybopper yé-yé movement. In 1965, however, Gall won the 1965 Eurovision song contest in Naples, where she represented Luxembourg singing Serge Gainsbourg's bubblegum song "Poupée de cire, poupée de son." This launched a flourishing career for her amid controversy over the content of that song as well as the scandalous Gainsbourg follow-up with “Les Sucettes” that she released in 1966. Her growing success eventually became nettlesome in her relationship with Claude, who was notoriously jealous and reportedly told her: “You won Eurovision, but you lost me.”

The song “Comme d’habitude” (“As Usual”) was released in November 1967 and reached #1 in France for a week but with only modest sales. It was basically a “dirge about a loveless (and monotonous) relationship,” fashioned after Claude's deteriorating relationship with France Gall.

Both “Comme d’habitude” and “My Way” (featured below) are wrapped in the same melody by Jacques Revaux. It is surprising how such dissimilar birds can display the same feathers. Each song’s title serves as a lyrical leitmotif sprinkled throughout the lyrics--22 times in the case of “Comme d’habitude” (with increasing frequency towards the end), and 6 times for “My Way” (as the last line of each stanza). Both songs leave wide interpretive leeway for singers to modulate and phrase the lines in their particular way. The verses are all melodically similar, so they make a particularly apt fit with the lyrics and monotonous message of “Comme d’habitude,” a song which highlights the deadliness of routine that accompanies the demise of love.

The structure of both songs is Verse/Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Outro. The Verses in “Comme d’habitude” describe the repetitive daily routine in detail, while the Chorus describes the narrator’s adaptive mechanisms for dealing with the situation: pretending, smiling laughing, living. “My Way’s” narrative is less detailed but a bit richer in flavor.

Verse 1
Je me lève
Et je te bouscule
Tu ne te réveilles pas
Comme d'habitude
Sur toi Je remonte le drap
J'ai peur que tu aies froid
Comme d'habitude
Ma main caresse tes cheveux
Presque malgré moi
Comme d'habitude
Mais toi tu me tournes le dos
Comme d'habitude

Verse 2
Et puis Je m'habille très vite
Je sors de la chambre
Comme d'habitude
Tout seul Je bois mon café
Je suis en retard comme d'habitude
Sans bruit Je quitte la maison
Tout est gris dehors, comme d'habitude
J'ai froid, Je relève mon col
Comme d'habitude

Chorus
Comme d'habitude
Toute la journée
Je vais jouer À faire semblant
Comme d'habitude Je vais sourire
Comme d'habitude, Je vais même rire
Comme d'habitude Enfin je vais vivre
Comme d'habitude

Verse 3
Et puis le jour s'en ira
Moi je reviendrai
Comme d'habitude
Seul, J'irai me coucher
Dans ce grand lit froid
Comme d'habitude
Eh oui, je resterai là
En cachant larmes
Comme d'habitude
Mes larmes, mes larmes je les cacherai
Comme d'habitude

Chorus
Comme d'habitude
Même la nuit
Je vais jouer À faire semblant
Comme d'habitude, tu rentreras
Comme d'habitude, je t'attendrai
Comme d'habitude, on fera semblant

Outro
Comme d'habitude

Verse 1
I get up
And I jostle you
You don't wake up
As usual
On you I pull up the sheet
I'm afraid you're cold
As usual
My hand caresses your hair
Almost despite myself
As usual
But you you turn your back
As usual

Verse 2
And then I quickly dress
I leave the room
As usual
All alone I drink my coffee
I'm late as usual
Noiselessly I leave the house
All is grey outside, as usual
I'm cold, I raise my collar
As usual

Chorus
As usual
All day long
I'll play at pretending
As usual, I'll smile
Yes, as usual, I'll even laugh
As usual, finally, I'll live
As usual

Verse 3
And then the day will pass
Me, I will return
As usual
Alone, I will go to bed
In this big cold bed
As usual
Oh, yes I will stay there
Hiding tears
As usual
My tears, my tears I'll hide them
As usual

Chorus
As usual
Even at night
I'll play at pretending
As usual, you'll come in
As usual, I'll wait for you
As usual, on fera semblant

Outro
Comme d'habitude

My Way, 1969

Canadian singer/songwriter/actor and former teen idol Paul Anka heard "Comme d'habitude" on the radio in 1968 while vacationing in France. He recalled: "I thought it was a shitty record, but there was something in it," so he spent one dollar to acquire publication rights to the music. He was only 27 years old, but he was on the nightclub circuit in New York and Las Vegas making money for the mob that controlled the record business and The Strip. Younger than most of his Sinatra associates, Anka became an honorary member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack. Anka recalled that Sinatra, who seldom wrote his own songs, had often teased him: “Hey kid, when are you going to write me a song?” Anka admitted: “I couldn’t. I was scared to death. I was writing all this teen stuff.”

After he acquired the rights to “Comme d’habitude,” it sat in a drawer in Anka’s New York apartment for two years until Sinatra called one day and said: “Kid, we're going to dinner tonight.” At dinner, Sinatra dropped a bombshell: “I'm quitting the business. I'm sick of it, I'm getting the hell out.” He also told Anka: “I’m doing one more album…you never wrote me that song.”

Rat Pack

Anka could read the writing on the wall. He returned to New York and spent the night writing lyrics that sounded the way he thought Sinatra and his mob associates would talk in the steam rooms: “And now the end is near. I face the final curtain…I ate it up and spit it out.” Bingo! Anka’s record company was displeased that he didn’t keep the song for himself, but he thought: “Hey, I can write it, but I'm not the guy to sing it. It was for Frank, no one else." As Joe Queenan wrote in “The Guardian:”

“What made “My Way” so affecting was that Frank Sinatra actually possessed the moral
authority to sing it. A hoodlum, a boxer, a heartthrob, a has-been, a comeback kid, a titan, a
has-been once again, and finally a living legend back on top for good, Sinatra had actually
lived the kind of life described in the song, having taken the blows and done it his way.”

At the time, Frank’s crooner style of old-time music was fading worldwide under the onslaught of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones and their ilk. His recent marriage with Mia Farrow was listing as well. Sinatra pulled himself together to record Anka's re-write and released it in 1969 with outcomes that we all now know. "My Way" became a defiant anthem of self-affirmation for Sinatra and a global hit.

Historically, it marked a huge transition in global music trends. Its opening lyrics, however, represented a candid personal flag of surrender that must have been hard for Sinatra to swallow:

“And now, the end is near. And so I face the final curtain. My friend, I’ll say it clear, I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain. I’ve lived a life that’s full. I travelled each and every highway. And more, much more than this. I did it my way.”

“My Way” became an iconic, multi-generation cultural phenomenon--one of the most recorded songs in music history, and a favorite at funerals and retirement parties. There are versions as diverse as those by Nina Simone, Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols and many others. Despite the fact that it propelled Sinatra’s recognition to new heights, Sinatra himself never liked the song. His daughter Tina revealed in a BBC interview that he thought it was self-serving and self-indulgent, not to mention somewhat confessional. Tina said: “The song stuck and he couldn’t get it off his shoe.” Stuck on his shoe or not, it revived Frank Sinatra’s career. Even after his “Farewell Concert” in 1971, two years after the song hit the decks, he returned to activity and continued another 27 years until death brought it to a close in 1998. That’s a lot of years singing “My Way.” Here is an early rendition from 1970 at the Royal London Symphony.

As for Paul Anka, he built his name as the youngest headliner in Vegas in the 1960s, and went on to run his own Vegas nightclub, Jubilation, in the ‘70s. He performed "Anka Sings Sinatra: His Songs, My Songs, My Way" during the 2019-2020 season. And France Gall? Her career matured and after the breakup with Claude François in 1967 she had a relationship with French singer Julien Clerc from 1970-74 and was married to Michel Berger in 1976 unfil hs xisx in 1992. She passed away in 2018.

The year 2024 brought a touch of poetic irony to this story when France chose to re-claim the song “My Way” as part of its own narrative. As the 2024 Paris Olympics closed, upcoming French “chanteuse” and model Yseult (Yseult Marie Onguenet), clad in black Dior at the Stade de France, provided a rousing rendition of “My Way.” According to French organizers of the games, this performance provided an "illustre exemple du lien qui unit la France et les Etats-Unis et de l'influence réciproque entre les deux cultures."

If not that, it was at least a powerful cultural bridge to the next Olympic games in 2028 at Los Angeles.

Life on Mars, 1971

David Bowie was actually the first person to write new lyrics for the tune of “Comme d’habitude.” It was common practice at the time for music publishers in France to send French songs to affiliated publishers in London for adaptation into the English language with its vast global market. That’s just what Jacques Revaux did in 1968 when he sent "Comme d'habitude" to London. There, publishers in Denmark Street employed a lowly “jobber” songwriter named David Jones (aka Davie Bowie after 1966 to avoid confusion with The Monkees Davy Jones). He was tasked to write English lyrics. Bowie actually recorded a “sing-over” on top of “Comme d’habitude” that he called “Only a Fool Learns to Love” but his publisher (David Platz) rejected it out of hand.

When Bowie heard Sinatra’s “My Way” in 1969, he was unhappy that he had missed the boat. He said: “The next time I heard it, it was “My Way” by Frank Sinatra.” Bowie commented in an interview: "That really made me angry for so long—for about a year ...” In revenge, and as parody to channel his frustration and disillusionment, Bowie quickly wrote and recorded his 1971 sci-fi anthem “Life on Mars.”

The linkages of "Life on Mars" with “Comme d’habitude” and “My Way” are attested by the historical record of Bowie’s recollections, similar chord progressions, and themes in all the songs that express the futility of achieving full satisfaction. Bowie’s song provides an implied question (“Is there life on Mars?”) with an evasive implied answer (“There sure isn’t any down here”). Sinatra at least did it “his way.” And Claude François endured each day “as usual.” As though to leave no doubt, Bowie penned the words “Inspired by Frankie” on the liner notes next to “Life on Mars” in his album “Hunky Dory” where the song first appeared. He released it as a single in 1973. In case there was any remaining doubt, Bowie remarked:

“There was a sense of revenge in that, because I was so angry that Paul Anka had done My Way.
I thought I’d do my own version. There are clutches of melody in that [Life On Mars?] that were
definite parodies.”

As Oscar Wilde mused in his 1889 essay "The Decay of Lying:"

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

Sometimes, Art even imitates Art.

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