Paul Anka

One of the most enduringly successful artists of the late 20th century, Paul Anka first gained international fame as one of the world's biggest pop idols of the late 1950s/early 1960s before reinventing himself as a family entertainer in Las Vegas; and then finding further commercial success with more adult material in the 1970s. The son of Lebanese immigrants who ran a restaurant in Canada, Anka was 14 when he released his first single I Confess prompting a move to New York and instant fame with the dramatic and passionate US Number 1 single Diana. Unusually for the time he wrote his own songs and a succession of pop hits like Lonely Boy and Put Your Head On My Shoulder followed in 1958, while his song-writing gained further credence when Buddy Holly recorded his song I Guess It Doesn't Matter Any More. The hits dried up with the advent of the 1960s beat boom, but Anka was back at Number 1 in 1974 with You're Having My Baby (with Odia Coates) and maintained his formidable stature with compositions like the theme music for The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, Tom Jones' She's A Lady and - most famously - the English lyrics for the iconic Frank Sinatra hit My Way. Anka also collaborated on a couple of songs with Michael Jackson and diversified into acting.

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