Day 35: The “Happy Birthday” song
It’s said to be the most recognizable song in the English language. And for many of us, the one that makes us the least comfortable.
The melody of “Happy Birthday To You” originally came from another song called “Good Morning To All”, from 1893. The words to the song first appeared in print in a poem called “Roy’s Birthday”, in 1901. And in 1912 the combination of the two created the birthday staple that our family attempts to sing every year.
The most interesting stuff I found about this song was actually around the copyright of it. It didn’t enter the public domain in the U.S. until 2016, when the company that claimed to own the rights to it lost a federal court case and was forced to pay back all of the licensing fees they had collected, to the tune of (pun intended — they always are in my writing) $14 million.
The court had ruled that the company could not prove that it owned the copyright, and since no other entity made that claim, it sort of automatically fell into the public domain.
Prior to that, any public performance of the song needed to be licensed for some amount of money in order for it to be legal. In 2010, for example, it cost $700 for a single performance. But the 1994 film Hoop Dreams, paid $5,000 in order to legally distribute the film with the song in it. Music licensing is a mess.
Anyway, now you can freely perform the song wherever you like and not have to worry about getting dinged.
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