Comme d'Habitude: Lyrics, Meaning & History

Frank Sinatra recorded it as the ultimate anthem of no regrets, sung at more funerals and retirements than almost any song in English. Elvis closed shows with it; Sid Vicious snarled through a punk version. Almost none of the millions who know My Way by heart have heard the French song it came from — and that original isn't about looking back on a life well lived. It's about a couple going through the motions of a relationship that's already over.

That gap is why Comme d'habitude (As Usual) is worth learning as more than trivia. It's a genuine piece of 1960s French pop, still played on French radio today, with lyrics at a comfortable intermediate level, and one clean grammar payload hiding in its most famous closing phrase. Learn this song and you get real French music history plus a tense French speakers use constantly: the futur simple.

From a Failed Song to a French Standard

Comme d'habitude started as a melody with nowhere to go. Composer Jacques Revaux wrote the tune first, tried it out himself under the title Pour moi (For Me), then offered it around without much success. It only became a hit once singer Claude François heard it, bought the rights, and brought in lyricist Gilles Thibaut to write words fitting his own life — François was going through a real breakup with singer France Gall at the time, and the lyrics lean on that raw material. Recorded in 1967, Comme d'habitude became one of François's signature songs, an ironic twist for a melody others had already passed on.

Key Phrases

• comme d'habitude (kohm dah-bee-tewd) — as usual
• se lever (suh luh-vay) — to get up
• se réveiller (suh ray-vay-yay) — to wake up
• la routine (lah roo-teen) — the routine
• faire semblant (fair sahn-blahn) — to pretend

[AUDIO: comme d'habitude, se lever, se réveiller, faire semblant]

The Rewrite That Became My Way

In 1967, Canadian singer-songwriter Paul Anka heard Comme d'habitude on vacation in the south of France and couldn't stop thinking about the melody. He tracked down the publishing rights, reportedly for a symbolic one dollar, on condition he could write entirely new lyrics instead of translating the French ones. Working in New York with Frank Sinatra in mind, Anka wrote a different song around the same tune — one about looking back on a life lived your own way, no regrets. He titled it My Way, Sinatra recorded it in 1968, and it became arguably the most famous song of his career.

The two songs now share only a melody. Where the English lyric is a triumphant look back at a whole life, the French original is a quiet, present-tense account of one ordinary, souring morning. My Way has gone on to become one of the most-covered songs in recording history, while most people who love it have no idea the tune was born as a French breakup song.

What Comme d'Habitude Actually Says

Strip away the fame of the melody, and the French lyrics tell a small, specific story. The narrator wakes up next to a partner, and the first verses describe an ordinary morning routine — getting up, moving around the apartment, going through the same motions as every other day. Nothing dramatic happens. That's the point: the title phrase, comme d'habitude, anchors nearly every verse, turning the couple's routine into proof the relationship is running on autopilot rather than real feeling.

By the final verses, the tone shifts from description to prediction — the same routine will continue tomorrow, and the day after, because neither of them will actually say the relationship is over. The song's most quoted line closes on that resignation directly: je ferai semblant (I will pretend). It's a small phrase carrying the song's entire emotional weight — not a scene of two people breaking up, but of two people choosing not to.

Claude François was one of the biggest stars of French yé-yé pop, known as much for his flashy choreography and backup dancers, the Clodettes, as for hits like this one. He died suddenly in 1978, electrocuted while adjusting a bathroom light fixture — a jarringly ordinary accident for someone whose persona was pure spectacle, and it turned his catalog into an even bigger national touchstone afterward.

The Grammar Payload: Faire in the Futur Simple

That closing line, je ferai semblant, is built on the futur simple — French's plain future tense, for something that will happen later, not now. Faire (to do/to make) is one of a handful of common verbs that don't build their future stem the obvious way; instead of faire- plus an ending, the stem shrinks to fer- across every form.

Grammar Note

Once you know the irregular stem, the endings are completely regular and match every other futur simple verb.

• je ferai
• tu feras
• il/elle fera
• nous ferons
• vous ferez
• ils/elles feront
• Common mistake: writing je ferai the way you'd guess from the infinitive, e.g. je faisrai — the -ais- from faire disappears entirely; only fer- survives.
• Common mistake: confusing faire semblant (to pretend) with sembler (to seem) — il semble content means "he seems happy" (a genuine impression), while il fait semblant d'être content means "he's pretending to be happy" (a deliberate act).

Listening for It Yourself

Play Comme d'habitude once through just for the melody, separate from My Way, before you listen for the French. On a second listen, follow the lyrics and notice how many verses restate the same handful of routine actions; that repetition is doing real narrative work, not padding out the runtime. On a third pass, listen specifically for je ferai semblant near the end, then say the futur simple forms above out loud until fer- stops feeling like a typo for faire.

If you want the fuller picture, listen to My Way right afterward. Hearing how completely Anka's English lyric abandons the French storyline — while keeping every note of the melody — is one of the clearest real-world lessons in how much a translation can change when a songwriter, instead of a translator, does the rewriting.

Practice Exercises

• Fill in the blank: Demain, je ___ (faire) la vaisselle. (Tomorrow, I will do the dishes — use the futur simple)
• Translate into French, using the futur simple of faire: "They will make dinner tonight."
• Multiple choice: what does comme d'habitude mean? (a) like never before (b) as usual (c) as a habit forms
• True or false: Comme d'habitude and My Way share the same lyrics translated into two languages.
• Fill in the blank: Il ___ semblant de ne pas comprendre. (He's pretending not to understand — use the present tense of faire)
• Multiple choice: who bought the rights to the melody and wrote My Way's English lyrics? (a) Frank Sinatra (b) Paul Anka (c) Claude François

Answer Key

• Je ferai la vaisselle demain. — futur simple of faire, irregular fer- stem.
• Ils feront le dîner ce soir. — same irregular stem, ils/elles ending.
• (b) — comme d'habitude means "as usual."
• False — the two songs share only the melody; Paul Anka wrote entirely new English lyrics with a different story.
• Il fait semblant de ne pas comprendre. — present tense of faire, regular here.
• (b) Paul Anka — he bought the publishing rights and wrote My Way for Frank Sinatra.

Two Songs, One Melody

• Comme d'habitude is Claude François's 1967 original — a quiet account of a relationship running on routine, not the triumphant anthem My Way became.
• Paul Anka bought the melody's rights and wrote entirely new English lyrics for Frank Sinatra, so the two songs share only their tune.
• The song's key line, je ferai semblant, runs on the futur simple's irregular fer- stem — worth memorizing since faire shows up constantly in everyday French.

Next time My Way comes on, you'll know the real story behind the melody — and next time you need the future tense in French, je ferai, tu feras, il fera should come out without a second thought. Head over to Passage's Grammar section to practice more irregular futur simple verbs, or try the Exercises section to test yourself.