Elvis Presley Sang “My Way” Anyway — The Song Paul Anka Warned Him Never to Sing

In 1969, at the height of one of the most important turning points in Elvis Presley’s career, Paul Anka reportedly felt that ‘My Way’ was not the right material for Elvis Presley and had reservations about Elvis performing it.

Don’t sing “My Way.”

This was not simply a passing opinion. According to Anka’s own published memoir, he repeatedly warned Elvis that the song was not right for him. Anka had written the English lyrics specifically for Frank Sinatra, and he believed the emotional meaning of the song belonged to a very different kind of man.

But Elvis Presley had heard something in those words that Anka could not dismiss.

Elvis wanted to sing it anyway.

And he did.

Over the following several years, “My Way” became part of Elvis’s live repertoire. He performed it repeatedly in Las Vegas and on tour, treating the song with a seriousness that separated it from many of the other numbers in his shows. Then, on June 21, 1977, in Rapid City, South Dakota, Elvis performed it once again with cameras rolling.

He was only 42.

Just 56 days later, Elvis Presley would be dead.

And that final filmed performance would eventually become one of the most haunting recordings of his career.

A Song That Was Never Originally “My Way”

The story becomes even more fascinating when you realize that “My Way” did not begin as an American song.

The melody came from the 1967 French song “Comme d’habitude,” written by Claude François and Jacques Revaux. Paul Anka encountered the melody while visiting France and acquired the rights.

According to Anka’s own account, he later returned to New York and wrote completely new English lyrics with Frank Sinatra in mind.

Sinatra recorded the song on December 30, 1968.

The lyrics transformed the melody into a dramatic statement about looking back on a life, facing its consequences, accepting its mistakes, and ultimately declaring that the choices belonged to the singer.

It became synonymous with Sinatra.

But then Elvis heard it.

And Elvis heard something different.

According to Anka, Elvis told him that he wanted to record or perform the song. Anka tried to discourage him, arguing that it was not really Elvis’s kind of material.

But Elvis reportedly came back to the meaning of the words.

Those words meant something to him.

That may be the most important detail in the entire story.

Because Elvis apparently understood that “My Way” did not perfectly describe his life.

He sang it anyway.

Elvis Knew the Song Didn’t Completely Fit

One of the most revealing parts of this story comes from Elvis himself.

During a Las Vegas performance, Elvis reportedly made a remark about the song that complicates the popular idea that he simply embraced “My Way” as his personal anthem.

He acknowledged that the song might have worked for Sinatra, but that he had not yet lived enough of his own life to completely identify with what the lyrics represented.

That admission is extraordinary.

Elvis wasn’t pretending that everything in the song perfectly matched his circumstances.

He knew there was a difference.

Sinatra could perform “My Way” as a declaration about a completed life. Elvis was still living his.

He was still struggling.

Still changing.

Still searching.

Still trying to understand what his enormous success had actually cost him.

And yet he kept singing the song.

That makes his relationship with “My Way” far more complicated—and arguably far more powerful—than simply calling it an Elvis anthem.

The Brutal Irony of Elvis’s Final Years

By the 1970s, Elvis Presley was arguably one of the most famous human beings on Earth.

But fame did not necessarily mean freedom.

His career was heavily controlled by Colonel Tom Parker. His touring schedule had become relentless. His personal life was increasingly complicated, and his physical condition deteriorated dramatically during his final years.

This creates the central contradiction.

How could a man sing:

“I did it my way”

when so much of his professional life appeared to be controlled by other people?

That is exactly where Paul Anka’s criticism becomes particularly provocative.

According to Anka’s own memoir, he interpreted Elvis’s later performances as lacking the defiant quality he associated with Sinatra

Anka saw a tragic contradiction: a man singing about independence while, in Anka’s interpretation, living a life in which he had increasingly little control.

But there is another way to see it.

Perhaps Elvis wasn’t claiming that everything had gone exactly his way.

Perhaps he was reaching for something.

June 21, 1977: Rapid City

Then came Rapid City.

June 21, 1977.

Elvis arrived onstage for a performance that would later become part of the historical record of his final months.

He was visibly struggling. His health had deteriorated. His appearance was dramatically different from the energetic performer audiences had seen earlier in the decade.

But he performed.

And “My Way” was there.

The same song Paul Anka had once told him not to sing.

The same song Elvis had continued performing for years.

The same song about looking back at a life and facing its final chapter without surrender.

Elvis sang it in front of the cameras.

He also performed the remarkable version of “Unchained Melody” from that concert, an emotional performance that has become one of the best-known recordings from the final period of his career.

But “My Way” carries a different kind of weight.

Because history already knows what happened next.

On August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley died at Graceland.

He was 42 years old.

The final curtain had arrived far sooner than anyone expected.

Then the Recording Returned

In October, 1977, RCA released Elvis’s Rapid City performance of “My Way” as a single, with “America the Beautiful” on the other side.

The recording became a major posthumous success, reaching No. 2 on Billboard’s country singles chart.

Suddenly, the song Paul Anka had warned Elvis not to sing had become one of Elvis’s most haunting posthumous recordings.

And Anka was still alive to hear it.

That is where the story takes its darkest turn.

In his memoir, Anka offered a deeply critical interpretation of one of the most famous filmed performances from the final months of his career. He believed that the meaning of the song had been fundamentally different for Elvis than it had been for Sinatra.

Where Sinatra could project defiance, Anka saw tragedy in Elvis’s version.

Where Sinatra appeared to be celebrating a life lived according to his own decisions, Anka saw a man whose circumstances had increasingly controlled him.

It is a brutal interpretation.

But it is only one interpretation.

Was Paul Anka Right?

This is where the story becomes much more interesting than a simple argument between two musicians.

Maybe Anka was right.

If “My Way” is literally about controlling your destiny, making your own decisions, and refusing to bend to anyone, then Elvis’s final years make the song painfully ironic.

But perhaps Elvis understood something Anka didn’t.

Maybe “My Way” wasn’t a declaration that every decision had been his.

Maybe it was a declaration that, despite everything, he was still Elvis Presley.

He had been transformed by fame.

Controlled by business arrangements.

Burdened by expectations.

Criticized by the public.

Celebrated by millions.

And yet every night he walked onto the stage and performed.

He didn’t stop.

He didn’t abandon the music.

He sang the song anyway.

For years.

And finally, in Rapid City, with cameras recording only weeks before his death, he sang it one more time.

That changes the meaning of the performance.

It becomes less about a man claiming that everything went according to plan—and more about a man confronting the life he had actually lived.

Perhaps Elvis knew the words didn’t fit perfectly.

Perhaps that was precisely why he kept returning to them.

He was still trying to reach the person described in the song.

And then, suddenly, there was no more time.

The final curtain came.

The recording was released after his death.

And millions of people heard Elvis Presley singing about having lived life on his own terms, knowing that the man behind the microphone had spent years wrestling with how much of his life had actually belonged to him.

That is the haunting mystery of Elvis and “My Way.”

Paul Anka told him not to sing it.

Elvis sang it anyway.

And perhaps the most powerful part is that Elvis knew the song wasn’t a perfect description of his life.

He sang it anyway.

Not because the words were completely true.

But because, somewhere inside them, he was still searching for the truth.

So the real question isn’t simply Sinatra or Elvis?

It is this:

Can a song become yours even when your life doesn’t perfectly match its words?

For Elvis Presley, “My Way” may never have been a perfect autobiography.

Maybe it was something more heartbreaking.

Maybe it was the life he was still trying to claim.