This song is the a cover of the original by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil, first performed in their 1928 anti-capitalist musical drama, The Threepenny Opera.

The song has become more famous for this Bobby Darin version. While the song has mellow and cool sound, it is actually about a murderous rapist named Macheath from The Threepenny Opera.

The Darin version was a hit single, hit number one on the Billboard Top 100 in 1959, won a Grammy for Record Of The Year for Darin the same year, listed as the third most popular song of all time by Billboard, reached #255 on the Rolling Stone top 500 songs, and Simon Cowell named “Mack the Knife” as the single greatest song ever written.