Music Album Review: 'Paul Anka 30th Anniversary Collection: His All-Time Greatest Hits'

© 1989 Rhino Records Inc. 

On October 26, 1989, Los Angeles-based Rhino Records published Paul Anka - 30th Anniversary Collection: His All-Time Greatest Hits, a one-CD compilation album featuring 24 of Canadian singer-songwriter-actor Paul Anka's best-known and best-loved hits. Known throughout the world for songs such as Diana, Lonely Boy, Put Your Head On My Shoulder, and (You're) Having My Baby, Anka is also the musician who took a French-language song by Claude François and Jacques Revaux and transformed it into Frank Sinatra's signature song My Way. 

Paul Albert Anka was born on July 30, 1941 into an Antiochian Orthodox Christian of Syrian and Lebanese ancestry in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. His talent for music emerged early during his childhood, and when he was a grade school student, Paul sang in the choir of Ottawa's St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, where he also studied music theory with Frederic Karam, the choir's director.

When Paul was still in his teens, he signed a contract with ABC Records' producer Don Costa. His first professional hit, Diana, was written for a girl that Paul barely knew at his church. The song leaped to the No. 1 spot in the music charts in Canada as well as the U.S.; it was joined by other songs such as It's Time to Cry, (All of a Sudden) My Heart Sings, You Are My Destiny and Lonely Boy. As a result of his success, Anka became one of the Fifties' biggest teen idols, joining the ranks that included Tab Hunter, Sal Mineo, and James Dean.  Not coincidentally, Anka would later get a few scenes in 1962's The Longest Day (for which he wrote the words and music to the film's theme song) along with Mineo and Hunter.

Anka deliberately cultivated the image and persona of a "safe teen idol" along the lines of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. As a result, he parlayed his success as a singer-songwriter into other areas of show business. He became an actor, and in addition to his cameo as a U.S. Army Ranger in The Longest Day, Anka had a bit part in Samuel Fuller's 1959 war film Verboten!, which featured James Best (The Dukes of Hazzard), Susan Cummings, and Tom Pittman. Later, Anka would have a long career on film and TV, appearing in everything from a music special with Elvis to episodes of Kojak, Crime Story, The Simpsons, and Captain Ron.  

But because Anka chose to go for mainstream appeal rather than cater to the "bad boy" image of many popular rock singers, Anka's popularity took a hit when the "British Invasion" led by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones took the U.S. and Canada by storm. Nevertheless, Anka persisted, and he made several comebacks, most notably in the 1970s, when (among other things) he joined forces with the late Odia Coates in the hit duet (You're) Having My Baby in 1974. This ended the drought of hit singles that had plagued Anka since the late 1950s, and since then he has written and performed several other hits, including the world-famous anthem of middle-aged defiance made famous by Frank "Ol' Blue Eyes" Sinatra, My Way.

Track List

  1. Diana
  2. You Are My Destiny
  3. Crazy Love
  4. Let The Bells Keep Ringing
  5. The Teen Commandments
  6. (All Of A Sudden) My Heart Sings
  7. Lonely Boy
  8. Put Your Head on My Shoulder
  9. It's Time To Cry
  10. Puppy Love
  11. My Home Town
  12. Summer's Gone
  13. Tonight My Love, Tonight
  14. Dance On Little Girl
  15. Love Me Warm And Tender
  16. Eso Beso (That Kiss!)
  17. Goodnight My Love
  18. Jubilation
  19. (You're) Having My Baby
  20. One Man Woman/One Woman Man
  21. I Don't Like To Sleep Alone
  22. (I Believe) There's Nothing Stronger Than Our Love
  23. Times of Your Life

  24. My Way

My Take

Released by Rhino two years after Anka's Italiano (1987), Paul Anka - 30th Anniversary Collection: His All-Time Greatest Hits is the artist's 25th compilation album. It is not a comprehensive collection of all of Anka's songs; as the title clearly states, these are 24 of Anka's most popular hits, starting with the teen-angst anthem for boys with crushes, Diana and eventually ending up with Anka's more mellow and mature songs for grownups, including Time of Your Life and I Don't Like to Sleep Alone.

This is a delightful collection of songs that convey many moods, including sentimental, intimate, good-natured, mellow, romantic, innocent, and refined. It covers roughly three decades' worth of Anka's career, so you're going to hear songs from his teen idol days, his pre-British Invasion salad days, and his 1970s comeback phase. Late Baby Boom kids like me will remember Put Your Head on My Shoulder, (You're) Having My Baby, and Times of Your Life the best, especially if they heard a lot of Top 40 radio songs back in the day. Baby Boomers born in 1944 and up to 1950 will remember his older teen-idol songs best, especially Diana, Crazy Love, The Teen Commandments, and Puppy Love. 

Predictably, Anka's The Longest Day is not included, partly because it was written for a 20th Century Fox Film Corporation war movie released in 1962, but mostly because it doesn't fit the mood and setting of Paul Anka - 30th Anniversary Collection: His All-Time Greatest Hits. (Anka did, in fact, record it in '62, but his version, which you'll find at the end of this post, was not used in the film; the movie's End Credits sequence features Mitch Miller's Singers instead.)

I received my copy of Paul Anka - 30th Anniversary Collection: His All-Time Greatest Hits as a Christmas gift, and I have enjoyed it immensely.  Anka is a well-trained and extremely talented singer and songwriter, and even if rock 'n' roll fans scoff at his "vanilla" sensibilities, he still has a great deal of appeal to lovers of pop music everywhere.