This is one of the most interesting and successful
Frank Sinatra collections out there.
Everything Happens to Me avoids the obvious hits and collects a number of the finest ballads and torch songs that
Sinatra cut while at Reprise Records during the '60s, '70s, and early '80s. It's a regal collection that concentrates on the darker side of
Sinatra's art. Instead of celebrating a cross section of the Voice's career the way that so many compilations do, the album sounds like an elegy and has a strange cohesiveness considering that it's drawn up from material that stretches over a 20-year period.
Sinatra had recorded the title track numerous times throughout his career, but the previously unreleased version included here (complete with new lyrics) is his darkest and most battle-scarred interpretation. Even considering its lighter moments ("The Second Time Around" and the lyrically downbeat but wondrously swinging "Summer Wind"), this is a stark collection that almost plays like an original concept album about confronting disappointment, loneliness, and ultimately, mortality. That's a lot to ask casual fans to embrace, but
Everything Happens to Me ends up giving listeners who only know of the swinging Rat Packer more than a glimpse of the complexity and depth behind
Frank Sinatra's art.