The song has its origins from an occurrence when Bowie was asked to write English lyrics to a French song ("Comme d'habitude"), the song he came up with was "Even a Fool Learns to Love". The Canadian songwriter Paul Anka bought the rights to the original French version, and rewrote it into an English song called "My Way," later made famous by Frank Sinatra. Bowie's version was never released. "Life on Mars?" was Bowie's riposte to losing out on a fortune; it has a similar chord progression to "My Way," and as Bowie explained in an interview with the BBC, it is a "modernistic take" on the Anka/Sinatra song.