🎂 Happy Birthday to You: The world’s most popular song

John Lennon once claimed that The Beatles were “[more popular than Jesus]( According to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, there’s one song that’s way more popular than anything The Beatles ever wrote—more widely performed, in fact, than the works of The Beatles, Beethoven, and Bach combined. It’s a song that even small children around the world know by heart, and the only song that’s ever been performed on Mars (at least as far as we know). That song is “Happy Birthday to You.” “Happy Birthday” is the most-sung ditty in the English language, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. And while it may seem hard to imagine a world without the tune, it’s a relatively recent invention. In 1889, Patty Hill, a Kentucky educator, and her sister Mildred, who would go on to become an ethnomusicologist, [teamed up to write songs for children](. “Happy Birthday,” their greatest hit, went on to become the standard song for celebrations across a wide variety of countries and cultures. Close your eyes and make a wish. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( [Quartz Obsession] Happy Birthday to You September 10, 2019 The song that took over the world --------------------------------------------------------------- John Lennon once claimed that The Beatles were “[more popular than Jesus]( According to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, there’s one song that’s way more popular than anything The Beatles ever wrote—more widely performed, in fact, than the works of The Beatles, Beethoven, and Bach combined. It’s a song that even small children around the world know by heart, and the only song that’s ever been performed on Mars (at least as far as we know). That song is “Happy Birthday to You.” “Happy Birthday” is the most-sung ditty in the English language, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. And while it may seem hard to imagine a world without the tune, it’s a relatively recent invention. In 1889, Patty Hill, a Kentucky educator, and her sister Mildred, who would go on to become an ethnomusicologist, [teamed up to write songs for children](. “Happy Birthday,” their greatest hit, went on to become the standard song for celebrations across a wide variety of countries and cultures. Close your eyes and make a wish. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Brief history [1889:]( Patty and Mildred Hill begin composing songs for children. [1893:]( The Hill sisters publish the tune, with the words and title “Good Morning to All,” in their songbook Song Stories for the Kindergarten. The “Happy Birthday” lyrics are included as an alternative. [1912:]( The lyrics to “Happy Birthday” appear—accompanying the tune to “Good Morning to All”—for the first time in a piano manufacturer’s book of songs. [1933:]( “Happy Birthday” is featured in the world’s first singing telegram. [1935:]( The copyright to “Happy Birthday” is issued to the Hill sisters. [1955:]( Composer Igor Stravinsky writes “Greeting Prelude,” based on the “Happy Birthday” melody, for the 80th birthday of French conductor Pierre Monteux. [1962:]( Marilyn Monroe delivers her historically seductive version of the song to John F. Kennedy on his 45th birthday. [1969:]( Composer Aaron Copland writes an orchestral arrangement of “Happy Birthday” in honor of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 70th anniversary. [1988:]( Warner Music Group acquires control of the song as part of a $25 million deal. [1996:]( Reports circulate that Girl Scout troops are avoiding “Happy Birthday” ‘round the campfire because they’re worried about getting sued, prompting public outcry. [2002:]( A Saturday Night Live skit features Jack Black attempting to overthrow “Happy Birthday” with a hard-rock alternative involving riddles, a witch, and an epic quest. [2012:]( The Free Music Archive and New Jersey radio station WFMU sponsor a contest to replace the “Happy Birthday” song with a new tune that’s not ensnared in legal problems. [2013:]( The Mars Rover hums a hopeful “Happy Birthday” to itself, alone on the red planet. [2016:]( A US district judge approves a settlement that puts “Happy Birthday” in the public domain. Million-dollar question What did people sing on their birthdays before “Happy Birthday”? --------------------------------------------------------------- For the most part, nothing at all. As George Washington University law professor Robert Brauneis [explains in a paper]( on the song’s history: “According to scholar Elizabeth Pleck, birthday parties did not become common even among wealthy Americans until the late 1830s; modern birthday cakes emerged after 1850; and peer-culture birthday parties, involving children of the same age as the child whose birthday was being celebrated, emerged between 1870 and 1920, after American urban public schools became age-graded.” Medieval Germans and British Victorians were known to celebrate children’s birthdays, but birthday parties really went mainstream in the 20th century, buoyed by factors including the relatively recent [cultural]( [celebration]( of childhood and the [prosperous post-World War II era](. (It’s worth noting, too, that given [sky-high child mortality rates across cultures for most of history]( celebrating birthdays may have seemed like tempting fate.) As birthday recognition increasingly became the norm, so too did “Happy Birthday” become woven into the fabric of festivities, popping up in singing telegrams, plays, films, and more. A [1941 article]( in the New Yorker notes, however, that Patty Hill refused to license its use in swing music: “It was swung once on a Jack Benny program and she didn’t like it.” Quotable “Happy birthday to you, Marmelade im Schuh, Aprikose in der Hose, und ein Bratwurst dazu.” —The [parody version of the “Happy Birthday” song]( that German children sing, translating to, “Happy birthday to you, marmalade in the shoe, apricot in the pants, and those with a bratwurst too.” AP Photo By the digits [6:]( Notes in “Happy Birthday” [30 and 22:]( Ages of Mildred and Patty Hill when they began working on the song collection that would give rise to “Happy Birthday” [$2 million:]( Estimated annual revenue Warner Music Group collected for commercial performances of “Happy Birthday” during the decades it owned the rights to the song [$10,000:]( Fee Warner was known to charge some independent filmmakers to use the song [$14 million:]( Amount Warner agreed to pay as part of a settlement after its copyright claims were invalidated in a 2016 court ruling [$0:]( Amount that the “Happy Birthday” song costs now that it’s in the public domain Fun fact! A whopping 84% of UK citizens don’t wash their hands for the full 20 seconds required to vanquish germs, according to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. To ensure proper sanitation practices, the group [recommends]( that people time their hand-washing sessions by singing “Happy Birthday” twice. AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz The way we 🎂 now Oral tradition --------------------------------------------------------------- While “Happy Birthday” is the go-to song for many people around the world, there are alternatives. Some African Americans instead sing Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” song, originally written during the push to make Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a national holiday, as Aisha Harris [writes for Slate](. In order to avoid copyright issues during the Warner era, many films and TV shows opted for songs like “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” while [restaurant chains like Chili’s, Applebee’s, and Olive Garden]( developed their own spins on the song. And some countries, including [The Netherlands]( [Poland]( [Israel]( and [Mexico]( have their own distinct melodies and lyrics. Russia has several options, including a melancholy tune originally popularized by an [accordian-playing Claymation crocodile](. Many cultures today do share the desire to have some kind of birthday song to mark the occasion; a tune that we first hear when we’re small, and that we keep singing—to our own children, and to one another—as we grow up. Setting aside national anthems and religious hymns, Brauneis notes that “Happy Birthday” is often “the only secular song passed down through an oral folk song tradition and still sung in adulthood.” He also quotes David Huron, a professor of music at Ohio State University, who observed in a 1999 lecture that “Happy Birthday” is noteworthy in part because it is a “thoroughly domestic work… performed in the kitchen or the lunch room rather than the concert hall. No other musical work has evoked so much spontaneous music-making.” “Happy Birthday,” in other words, is an incredibly common song that—because it is sung specifically, each year, to us—feels deeply personal. Have a friend who would enjoy our Obsession with Happy Birthday to You? [ [Forward link to a friend](mailto:?subject=Thought you'd enjoy.&body=Read this Quartz Obsession email – to the email – pop quiz! Which of these “Happy Birthday” performances is not real? Hugh Jackman, to Sir Ian McKellanJustin Bieber, to Britney SpearsParis Hilton, to Hugh HefnerGeri Halliwell, to Prince Charles Correct. Correct! Bieber has never publicly serenaded Spears on her birthday—although he certainly could, next Dec. 2. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler Take me down this 🐰 hole! In addition to the [inherent awkwardness of the birthday cake and song ritual]( singing “Happy Birthday” is made challenging by an octave jump in the third line—“Happy birthday, dear reader”—that is often out of easy reach for singers. In 2015, a variation of the original “Happy Birthday” that’s easier to sing was discovered in the Hill sisters’ papers at the University of Louisville. NPR asked University of Louisville piano professor [Naomi Oliphant to perform that version](. Watch this! “Happy Birthday” as a global phenomenon --------------------------------------------------------------- A 2018 video from Condé Nast Traveler, featuring people from 70 different countries singing their nations’ traditional birthday songs, reveals that the song is also standard in countries ranging from France, Spain, Germany, and Italy to China, South Korea, South Africa, Malaysia, Lebanon, Egypt, and beyond. Poll What is the best birthday-themed song that’s not “Happy Birthday”? 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