“It Was A Very Good Year” by Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year" came out in 1965 on September of My Years, and it's a man looking back over his whole life and savoring every year of it. Ervin Drake wrote it in 1961 and Bob Shane of the Kingston Trio got to it first, on Goin' Places, but Sinatra's reading, in D minor, is the one that stuck. The singer recalls the girls he knew at 17, at 21 and at 35, then, grown old, tastes all of it like wine from a good vintage.

Gordon Jenkins arranged it and conducted, framing that voice with oboes, clarinets, bassoon, violas, cello and harp around Bill Miller's piano, with Sonny Burke producing. It won Sinatra the Grammy for Best Male Vocal Performance in 1966, won Jenkins one for the arrangement, and gave Sinatra his first number one on the Adult Contemporary chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.