Frank Sinatra Essay

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The Voice, 'Ol' Blue Eyes', Swoonatra, La Voz, and Chairman of the Board. These were all sobriquets of the infamous Frank Sinatra. However, one of Sinatra's earliest and possibly most well-known nicknames was The Voice. A title such as The Voice is more than just a name that sounds cool and sensual. It promises something flawless about his singing style, signifying you could select one song, or perhaps even an album, as representative of Frank Sinatra. However, Sinatra had a multitude of styles over his five decade career, so to call him the voice could potentially be doing an injustice, perhaps a more accurate description would be The Voices.
In this essay I will attempt to decipher how Frank Sinatra changed music. I will try to understand what made his music so different, unique, and genuine that we still worship him like a god today. In addition, I expect to discover how he changed as a person over his five decade career. I want to analyze who he associated himself with, assuming the possibility that these people had an effect on his music and persona. I believe that while his music changed as did his personality. I trust that when Sinatra originally started singing with the glee club of Demarest High School, he had no idea of where his life was heading, nor the legend he was going to become. Thus, as his fame progressed and evolved so did his music and disposition. In my own opinion, there is no one archetypal Sinatra song or album; honestly I don’t even believe that there is even one true Frank Sinatra style. His five decade career seemed to divide into three distinctive eras. Nonetheless, in order to reflect on one’s life we must start from the beginning.
It was on December 12, 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey, Anthony Mart...

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...ious music he created. He was also an outlaw in the eyes of the justice department due to his close affiliation with organized crime. All in all, Frank Sinatra is truly a legacy. He began as a young boy who had a passion for singing sweet romantic songs, and died as a god, an entity of music that will forever live on in the hearts of everyone who has heard his voice. I feel that it is a grave inaccuracy to think that a mere compilation album or even larger retrospective multi-disc sets, can give us an accurate musical portrait of the legendary Sinatra. Compilations from the inner and late periods of his career often loot songs from albums for which Sinatra he had carefully chosen the song sequences. Can a best-of collection do justice to the man who invented the concept album? After all, he was known as many names but his most notorious name of all was The Voice.

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