Paul Anka

• 1. Introduction

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  Paul Anka, the Canadian singer, songwriter and actor born on the 30th of July 1941, made his career-changing trip to Manhattan in 1956 with $100 from his uncle. He carried a verse he had written and a plan to sing it for a record executive. The executive was Don Costa of ABC Records, and the audition lasted only as long as a song. Within a few years the young visitor was a household name on two continents. His voice would keep turning up in unexpected places for the next sixty-odd years. Where did that verse come from, and who was it really for? How does one person end up behind music that other famous singers made their own? And what does a performer do when the chart hits stop arriving?

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• 2. Teen Idol Years

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  Andrew Emile Anka, called Andy, ran a restaurant named the Locanda in Ottawa, and his wife Camelia, born Tannis, raised their son Paul Albert there. Paul's autobiography, My Way, says both parents were of Lebanese Christian descent. It also traces the family's ancestors to Bab Tuma in Syria. His father came to Canada from Damascus, and his mother came from Lebanon. She died when he was 18.

  Music arrived early. Winifred Rees briefly taught him piano. Frederick Karam directed the choir at St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, where Paul sang and learned music theory. At Fisher Park High School he joined a vocal trio called the Bobby Soxers.

  His first single, "I Confess", came out when he was 14. The song he sang for Don Costa became "Diana". It reached No. 1 on both the Canadian and the American charts and remains one of the best-selling singles ever by a Canadian artist.

  The inspiration was long assumed to be a former babysitter. In a 2005 interview with Terry Gross of NPR, Anka said it was a girl at his church whom he hardly knew.

  In 1958 he placed four songs in the Top 20. "It's Time to Cry" reached No. 4, and "(All of a Sudden) My Heart Sings" reached No. 15. At 17 he ranked among the biggest teen idols of his day. That fame put him on tour in Britain and Australia alongside Buddy Holly.

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• 3. Songs for Other Voices

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  Buddy Holly recorded "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" just before he died in 1959, and Anka had written it for him. Anka then said the song carried a tragic irony. He gave his composer's royalty to Holly's widow, calling it the least he could do.

  Television viewers heard his work for decades without knowing his name. He wrote the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, reworking it in 1962 from an earlier tune called "Toot Sweet". Annette Funicello had already recorded that tune with lyrics in 1959 as "It's Really Love".

  Connie Francis took his song "Teddy" into the Top 20 in 1960. Tom Jones scored one of his biggest hits with "She's a Lady", another Anka composition.

  The most famous item on the list began as a French song, "Comme d'habitude", with music by Claude François and Jacques Revaux. Anka wrote English lyrics for it, and the result became "My Way", Frank Sinatra's signature song. Many artists have recorded it since, Elvis Presley among them.

  A much later partnership involved Michael Jackson. On the 12th of October 2009, Anka said that Jackson's new release "This Is It" came from a 1980 collaboration between the two. According to Anka, Jackson shelved the recording, and the tune was then released by Sa-Fire.

  Anka threatened to sue for credit and royalties. Jackson's estate gave him 50% of the copyright. Another song from that session, "Love Never Felt So Good", surfaced soon after. With "Don't Matter to Me", the three songs became posthumous Jackson hits in 2009-2014 and 2018.

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• 4. Second Acts

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  In 1963, Anka bought the rights and ownership of his ABC-Paramount catalog. He re-recorded the older hits for RCA Victor, the label he had joined in 1960. He also became one of the first pop singers to perform in Las Vegas casinos.

  By the early 1970s he had gone more than ten years without a top 25 record, and he was frustrated. He moved to United Artists. In 1974 he teamed up with Odia Coates for "(You're) Having My Baby", which went to No. 1.

  The pair followed it with three more Top 20 duets. "One Man Woman/One Woman Man" reached No. 7, "I Don't Like to Sleep Alone" reached No. 8, and "(I Believe) There's Nothing Stronger Than Our Love" reached No. 15.

  A Kodak jingle gave him another turn. Bill Lane wrote the words and Roger Nichols the melody of "Times of Your Life" in 1975. It proved so popular that Anka recorded a full version, which peaked at No. 7 on the US pop chart in 1976. His next single, "Anytime (I'll Be There)", was another song he wrote for Sinatra, and it reached No. 33.

  His last US Top 40 hit arrived in the summer of 1983. "Hold Me 'Til the Mornin' Comes" featured backing vocals from Peter Cetera, then the frontman of Chicago. It reached No. 2 on the Hot Adult Contemporary chart.

  The 1998 album A Body of Work was his first new US studio release since Walk a Fine Line in 1983. Guests included Celine Dion, Kenny G, Patti LaBelle and Skyler Jett. Cetera joined him again on a new take of "Hold Me 'Til the Mornin' Comes".

  Rock Swings followed in 2005, with big-band arrangements of contemporary rock songs. It brought a mainstream comeback of sorts and a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto. His album Songs of December charted at No. 58 in Canada in November 2011.

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• 5. Italy and Beyond

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  Ennio Morricone, Lucio Battisti and the lyricist Mogol all worked with Anka during his Italian years. His official discography lists nine singles from RCA Italiana, and Italian charts show at least six other songs he sang or recorded in Italian.

  "Ogni giorno" reached No. 1 in 1962. "Piangerò per te" and "Ogni volta" both peaked at No. 2, in 1963 and 1964. He sang "Ogni volta", which means "Every Time", at the Sanremo Music Festival in 1964. It sold more than one million copies in Italy alone and earned a gold disc.

  He returned to Sanremo in 1968 with "La farfalla impazzita", written by Battisti and Mogol. Italian crooner Johnny Dorelli sang the same title there. Both singers were eliminated before the final stage. In 2006 he cut a duet of "Diana" with 1960s hitmaker Adriano Celentano, with Italian lyrics by Celentano and Mogol and Alex Britti on guitar. It reached No. 3.

  Finland welcomed him from the start of his career. He played Helsinki's Linnanmäki amusement park in 1959 and Lappeenranta in 1989. He appeared at the Pori Jazz Festival on the 19th of July 2007 and again in 2012. He played Tampere three times, on the 6th of August 2008 and on the 9th and the 10th of August 2009.

  The 1991 Finnish film Prince of the Hit Parade, directed by Juha Tapaninen, includes a Las Vegas scene with him. It ends on archive footage of his Linnanmäki show, and he sings "How Long" in the background. The Finnish road movie Rumble also name-checks the same amusement park, when a father figure recalls being there with Anka.

  France was a harder market. His first French-market song was "Comme Avant", recorded with Mireille Mathieu. The 1964 album Paul Anka à Paris put six French-language tracks on side B. A Japanese single, "Kokoro no Sasae" and "Shiawase e no Tabiji", is also reported. In 1993 he recorded "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" with Filipino singer Regine Velasquez, and he later redid it with Celine Dion. He has performed four times in Israel and in 2019 rejected calls to boycott the country.

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• 6. Screen Roles

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  In the 1958 film Let's Rock, Anka sang and appeared in a scene signing autographs. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he starred in teen films such as Girls Town in 1959 and Look in Any Window in 1961, where he played a peeping Tom.

  The 1962 war film The Longest Day gave him a cameo as a U.S. Army Ranger. He also wrote its theme, which became the official march of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. His film work also produced "Lonely Boy", one of his greatest hits. That same year "My Home Town" reached No. 8 on the pop chart.

  Also in 1962, the National Film Board of Canada released a documentary about him, titled Lonely Boy. It is considered a classic of cinéma vérité.

  Later parts were lighter. He played a yacht broker in Captain Ron in 1992 and an Elvis-hating casino pit manager in 3000 Miles to Graceland in 2001. In the 1991 Perry Mason television movie The Case of the Maligned Mobster, he played a murder suspect. He also played Buddy Maus in the Kojak episode "The Betrayal".

  In 1960 he appeared twice as himself in NBC's short-lived crime drama Dan Raven. In 1976 he hosted the music showcase Paul Anka's Superstars, later repackaged as an episode of The Midnight Special. In 1985 he wrote and performed songs for the Canadian children's cartoon George and the Christmas Star.

  In October 1995, he sang a song with Lisa on The Simpsons. On American Idol, in seasons 2 and 3, he sang an adapted "My Way" that mocked the show's format, its contestants, its judges and its host. The performance was praised as one of the show's best moments.

  The Morecambe & Wise Show hosted him in 1970, and he sang his own lyrics to "My Way". The tape was believed lost until it was found, and BBC2 broadcast the episode again on Christmas Day 2021.

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• 7. Pop Culture Echoes

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  Lorelai Gilmore, the heroine of Gilmore Girls, named her Polish Lowland Sheepdog Paul Anka. Series co-creator Daniel Palladino picked the name after hearing the Rock Swings album at a coffeehouse. Anka appeared as himself in the sixth-season episode "The Real Paul Anka", where both Paul Ankas feature in a dream sequence Lorelai describes to her daughter Rory. He returned as himself in the 2016 revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. He also played himself on That '70s Show in the episode "Red's Last Day".

  In season four of The Masked Singer, he competed as "Broccoli". He finished in 7th place, leaving during the Group C finals.

  A stranger kind of fame came from a secret recording. In the mid-1980s someone taped Anka as he berated his crew and band for behavior he judged unprofessional. Asked about it on the interview program Fresh Air, he called the person who made the tape a "snake we later fired".

  The recording spread widely after it was uploaded to the internet around 2004. Quotes such as "The guys get shirts!" and "Don't make a maniac out of me!" became famous. Al Pacino's character in the 2007 film Ocean's Thirteen repeated some of those lines.

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• 8. Life Off Stage

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  Anka met the model Anne de Zogheb in 1962 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she was on assignment under contract to the Eileen Ford Agency. Her father was the Lebanese diplomat Charles de Zogheb. They married in a ceremony at Paris-Orly Airport on the 16th of February 1963, and the marriage lasted until the 2nd of October 2000. Their daughter Amanda later married the actor Jason Bateman. On the 6th of September 1990, Anka became a naturalized United States citizen.

  In 2008 he married his personal trainer, Anna Åberg, in Sardinia, Italy. They divorced in 2010, and he has full custody of their son. Anna later appeared on the Swedish TV3 show Svenska Hollywoodfruar. In October 2016 he married Lisa Pemberton in Beverly Hills, California, and they divorced in 2020. His autobiography, My Way, co-written with David Dalton, appeared in 2013.

  Honours began at home. A street in Ottawa was named Paul Anka Drive in 1972. In 1981 the Ottawa City Council declared the 26th of August Paul Anka Day, to mark his quarter-century in show business. In 2004 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

  In 2012 he co-founded ARHT Media, a holographic technology startup. He sits on its board of advisors with the businessman Kevin O'Leary. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney served there too until his death in February 2024. Anka's most recent listed album, Inspirations of Life and Love, is dated 2026.

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