Happy Birthday: is a song that is typically performed on a person’s birthday to commemorate the occasion. The second most well-known song in the English language is “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” according to the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records.
At least 18 languages have been used to translate the song’s basic lyrics. In 1893, American sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill penned Good Morning to All, which has long been linked to the song’s melody, although the sisters’ claim that they wrote the music is challenged.
In the United States and the European Union, the music is in the public domain. It was originally claimed by Warner Chappell Music in the US that the song was copyrighted, and Warner Chappell agreed to pay back $14 million in licensing payments when the copyright claim was found to be invalid in 2015.
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, dear
Happy birthday to you
Traditional variations
English-speakers have a long tradition of singing the song “Happy Birthday to You,” frequently when a birthday cake is offered to the individual being celebrated. A wish for a long life for the birthday person is often added by partygoers after the song has been sung, with the phrase “and many more!” “Hip hip…” and “… hurrah!” are common responses to “Happy Birthday” in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, respectively, after the song has been finished. Typically, this is performed three times in a row. citations needed
Immediately following the celebration of a child’s birthday in the United States and Canada, there is a tradition of giving gifts to the children “Singers transition from “Happy Birthday” to “How old are you now?” What is your current age? Do you know how old you are right now?” To finish off, [cite required] and then add the numbers: “What about you? Are there two of you? Is that you…? “unless they’re old enough to do so
Performances For a Broad Audience
Marilyn Monroe’s delivery of “Happy Birthday to You” to President John F. Kennedy in May 1962 was one of the most memorable renditions of the song.
Another prominent usage was by Victor Borge, a comic pianist, who would play the song in other composers’ styles or begin playing Moonlight Sonata, seamlessly moving into the tune.
For the song to be used in a film, Warner Chappell reportedly demanded as much as $10,000, according to the documentary The Corporation.
It is unusual for filmmakers to show whole singalongs of ‘Happy Birthday.’ due to the copyright issue and to utilize “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” which belongs to the public domain instead. Previously, the song was freely exploited, such as in the Warner Bros. animation Bosko’s Party, in which a chorus of animals sings it twice.
When the main character, iCarly, and others try to sing “Happy Birthday to You” to Sam in an episode of the TV show iCarly titled “iMake Sam Girlier,” in 2009, they are told by Freddie that the song is not in the public domain and must be replaced with the song “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” instead. citations needed
For the fifth anniversary of the BBC radio show, the Beatles recorded “Happy Birthday, Dear Saturday Club.” The compilation CD On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2 was published in 2013 and includes this recording. [56]
The character Dan Rydell performs the song to his co-anchor during a telecast in “Intellectual Property,” a 1998 episode of Sports Night, requiring his network to pay royalties and driving him to urge his colleagues to find public-domain music for him to sing on their birthdays.
In a Disney A.N.T. Farm episode, characters continuously try to sing the song, only to be stopped by others reminding them of the price. It is also included in The Wrong Trousers, although “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” was substituted for the song’s melody in DVD editions.
Pre-production vetoed a Klingon-language rendition of the song from the seventh season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Parallels, substituted with “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” in Klingon.
Using the music is problematic even in a fictional language. During the episode “I Second That Emotion” of Futurama, they parody the song and its copyright by composing their own version with the lines “What day is today? / It’s (birthday personbirthday/ )’s What a great day to celebrate!” citations needed
Erica Goldberg is challenged to make a Hanukkah song in The Goldbergs episode “Han Ukkah Solo.” “Happy Birthday To You” is the melody she sings her lyrics to. “I’d have to pay those elderly people hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I’ve already exhausted our budget on construction paper,” her music instructor explains.
Following an announcement regarding the royalty charge for singing “Happy Birthday to You” on television, the TGS cast begins to perform the song in the 30 Rock episode “Goodbye, My Friend”.
When a character enters the scene, the cast is interrupted. citations needed It appears as though the song had been sung in its entirety when Pierce wonders, “How come we just sang the final two words?” in the Community episode “Mixology Certification.” citations needed
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s discouragement was lifted at a birthday party sequence in the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize, which was released in 1987. Because to the high expense of clearing several copyrights, including “Happy Birthday to You,” the picture remained unavailable for sale or broadcast for many years after its first release. PBS was able to rerun the film in 2005 thanks to grants for copyright clearances
Musical variants of “Happy Birthday” by composers such as Wagner, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven as well as Viennese, New Orleans, and Hungarian were performed in 2010 under the baton of Western classical music conductor Zubin Mehta at Carnegie Hall.
When NASA’s Curiosity rover arrived to Mars one year ago today, engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center utilized SAM instrumentation to have the rover “sing” “Happy Birthday” on the Martian surface on August 5, 2013.
Stephen Colbert attempted to sing the song in commemoration of the song’s 90th anniversary on the March 6, 2014 edition of the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, but was barred from doing so owing to copyright difficulties. “royalty-free” birthday song: Colbert instead presented his new “royalty-free” birthday song, a parody of the US national anthem that finishes with the verse “Warner Music can’t sue me, and the land of our birth.”
