It is that annual "Diva Day", when we celebrate the birthdays of two eternal icons and Patron Saints here at Dolores Delargo Towers [one, gladly, still with us us, one forever missed] - Dame Shirley Bassey and Mr David Bowie.
To that end, a mini-quiz, dear reader. What connects this song from the then Miss Bassey's repertoire...
...with this, from Mr Bowie's?
From The Guardian:
In the late 60s, a young songwriter called David Bowie was asked by his manager to write an English lyric for a French pop song, Comme d’habitude (As Usual), by Claude François. “I turned in the pitifully awful title 'Even a Fool Learns to Love', which he rejected out of hand, quite rightly, I feel,” Bowie remembered in 1999. “And it passed on to Paul Anka, who did his own English lyric. And he called it, simply and effectively, 'My Way'”...Inspired, indeed....Later, Sinatra would claim My Way “really had nothing to do with my life whatsoever”. Anka, however, felt Sinatra’s experiences helped give the song its power. “Shit happens to everybody every day, whether you’re Frank Sinatra or Joe Blow,” says Anka. “Of course he had regrets – that’s why we sat around and drank every night. You could hear it come out in him, from Ava Gardner, to whoever … but that was the magic of Sinatra: when he sang about it, you believed it. His lucky streak is that he is able to sing about it, convey it and help people along who need it emotionally.”
... When the young Bowie heard Don Costa’s grand arrangement [for Sinatra] on the radio, he was crestfallen. “So in retaliation,” he said, “I wrote 'Life on Mars'.”
A note on the inner sleeve of Hunky Dory reads: “Inspired by Frankie.”
