How ‘My Way’ became the Philippines’ deadliest tune
Some events in musical history truly shocked the world. While music is meant to be pleasant, so tied into identity and joy, every now and then, it falls into the dark side.
There are more than a few blood-curdling events in music history. The deaths at the Altamont Free Festival come to mind, the many crowd crushes throughout history or the assassinations of so many musical icons. But in the Philippines during the 2000s, there was a bizarre series of violent incidents all linked to Frank Sinatra.
The song ‘My Way’ has a rich musical history. Frank Sinatra made the anthem famous with lyrics that speak to a man looking back at his life with pride. However, the lyrics are more ominous than jovial. Opening, “And now the end is here / And so I face that final curtain,” the song has undeniable ties to death that became strangely prophetic.
When Elvis Presley began covering the song during his Las Vegas residency, it became a sad anthem for the end of his life. After his death in 1977, his cover was posthumously released. The same goes for Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious, who shoots his audience dead at the end of the performance in The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle, in an even more prophetic move. A year after his punk rock version of the track, the infamous bass player was dead.
But nowhere did the morbid lyrics of the song come more true than in the Philippines. One of the most bizarre patterns in music history, between the years of 2002 and 2012, the song was connected to at least 12 deaths. Becoming known as the “‘My Way’ Killings”, a strange pattern occurred of incredibly violent, regularly fatal fights breaking out in karaoke bars over the song.
Karaoke is incredibly popular in the Philippines. The city is packed with karaoke bars, offering cheap nights out to low-income workers and private rooms for parties. Naturally, ‘My Way’ stands out as a favourite karaoke song, providing a big singalong anthem that everyone knows. But since these killings, many people in the Philippines now refuse to sing the song in public due to superstition or fear.
Attention was drawn to the killings in 2007 when a 29-year-old was killed by a bouncer at a karaoke bar in Rizal. The bouncer admitted that he shot at the victim after they sang an off-key rendition of the track and refused to stop. As the story gained attention, tales of more incidents came out.
Continuing into the 2010s, a chairman of one of the countries’ small villages was shot alongside his driver by motorcycle-riding gunmen while singing the song at a Christmas party. While the death is suspected to have been connected to the drug trade, the connection to the Sinatra song spread the tale of the ‘My Way’ killings even further.
By 2012, the police reported that there had been 12 reported fatalities linked to the song. Either through bar fights, hit-and-run shootings or purposeful attacks, the song became an unlikely omen of extreme violence.
It’s not known what caused it all. Some say it’s all down to perceived aggressiveness in the lyrics, with the domineering call of “I did it my way” speaking to a calculated alpha male who did whatever he wanted and got his way. Butch Albarracin, the owner of a Manila-based singing school, once said that the song evokes “feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody. It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.”
Others say it’s merely a coincidence and that the song is simply so popular and so regularly performed; it was just life chance that it linked to all these deaths. Another possible, more logical reason is simply that ‘My Way’ has accidentally become connected to the expected boiling over of violence in drinking culture. The New York Times writer Norimitsu Onishi argued that the killings were “the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo”.
Either way, the song is now deeply associated with rage and danger in the country. A song now tainted with superstition and fear, it is the ultimate symbol of the phenomenon of “karaoke rage”, proving how easily passion for a good song can go sour.
