What was Frank Sinatra’s final number one hit?
The inimitable Frank Sinatra died as a frail 82-year-old on May 14th, 1998. After a life of riding on top, his fateful final words were, “I’m losing”.
The tragic overtures of this defeated ending have the capability to obscure what was otherwise obviously an unprecedented trajectory. He was the showman, the blue eyes, and the man with the Midas touch who defined the entire notion of entertainment for a generation. But as we all know by now, as much as his legacy was immortal, the man himself was not.
In his final years, Sinatra’s original prescience somewhat shrank. His voice grew deeper and more hollow than it ever was before, lacking that spark of command and magic that made him so enthralling in the first place. Yet the sheer spectre of the man meant that this was no matter – he was still equally as beloved, and the success kept rolling on in.
That may have worked in a commercial capacity with shows and live appearances, but perhaps surprisingly, Sinatra’s climb to the top of the charts was a much harder-fought battle. To be fair, he still managed to score seven chart-toppers in his time, but for a Chairman of the Board who prided himself on a decadent back catalogue spanning decades, it just possibly seems a little underwhelming.
This is made especially more the case when you realise that his last number one hit arrived some 31 years before he passed away. His song ‘Something Stupid’, alongside his daughter Nancy Sinatra, was released in 1967 and shot straight to the top of the charts. However, it was all the more significant not just for the father-daughter duet but also for the fact that it was his final chart-topping hit.
What were all of the number ones by Frank Sinatra?
It should come as no surprise that Sinatra’s number one collection reads essentially the same as a greatest hits catalogue, with ‘Strangers in the Night’, ‘That’s Life’, ‘It Was a Very Good Year’, ‘Summer Wind’, and ‘The World We Knew (Over and Over)’ all making the bill prior to that cut off point in 1967.
But in a turn-up for the books, 2025 happens to be the year in which Sinatra has managed to clinch back some of his former chart glory, albeit obviously not via the conventional means, given that the man died some 27 years ago. That would really be something to behold, if he were still crooning tunes from beyond the grave.
Instead, it has been the American a capella group Pentatonix who have somewhat revived the Chairman’s chart chances by releasing a version of ‘I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm’ this festive season, with the man himself featuring as part of the original vocals. That took the top spot on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart – OK, admittedly not the main one – and gave Sinatra one more chart-topper for the road.
It proves that the legacy of Sinatra will always live, whether through his own words or the medium of an a capella group. Is it really what he would have wanted? Who’s to say, but with those royalties inevitably rolling in, the surviving Sinatras have indeed been in for a very good year.
