The one singer Bono said was even better than “the greatest on Earth”
The enduring power of music was never lost whenever Bono got up to sing.
He truly felt that someone’s life should be changed in a few short minutes if someone had the right idea, and all that he usually needed was the support of his brothers in U2 to turn in some of the greatest records that rock and roll has ever heard. But even when looking at the most technically gifted performers to ever do it, there was no way that kind of power could compare to someone pouring their soul out on record.
Then again, Bono was never one to play up his vocal tone by any stretch. Anyone who has that much time to talk onstage might seem to like the sound of their own voice whenever they perform, but even listening back to tunes like ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ back in the day, you could see the singer physically react in terror to hearing his voice that vulnerable. But the best voices are the ones that have little adornment around them.
Just look at Bob Dylan. There’s no way that he’s going to go to battle with Freddie Mercury as one of the greatest singers of all time, but what Dylan could do with his voice wasn’t about trying to make everything sound pleasant. He wanted to make sure that people felt every word he said, which probably explains why some of his greatest tunes are remembered more as performances on record rather than the most perfect recording of all time.
If Bono did think he had a good voice, though, he needed to be on his A-game if he was going to make something worthy of Pavarotti singing. Even when compared to Mercury’s vocal tone, Pavarotti’s range is still one of the purest voices in all of music, practically telling an emotional story every single time he stepped up to the microphone that didn’t have to make sense to get some emotion out of you.
Then again, Bono knew that the reason Pavarotti moved him was completely different than how Dylan did. Pavarotti could get his point across with pure power all the time, but when listening to someone like Frank Sinatra sing some of his finest tunes, Bono knew that one of the kings of American music could have given Pavarotti a run for his money on any day when he re-recorded the song ‘My Way’.
When talking about the song later, Bono felt that not even Pavarotti could touch what Sinatra did, saying, “The original is a boast. Pavarotti’s the greatest singer on Earth but shouldn’t sing in English. I have a version of it without the greatest singer in the history of the world and it’s just Frank singing, and it’s years after. Same key, same text, same arrangement, and it’s written as an apology.”
But given the lyrics of the tune, it actually works in the same way that someone like Johnny Cash recorded Nine Inch Nails’s ‘Hurt’. Whereas that case was one of the central figures in country music putting a neat bow on his career and wondering what he could have done differently, this was Sinatra standing up, acknowledging the faults he had along the way, and laying himself bare to both his family and the audience.
The song itself is still written like a boast, but what Sinatra is able to do with only a few words is still unmatched in rock and roll history. Bono can try all he wants to make rock and roll feel like a holy exercise whenever he performs, but what Sinatra did with only a few syllables has been able to resonate with millions around the world who ever felt that they’ve made more than a few mistakes in their life.
