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From WinkyPedia, the free encyclopedia that tells you what you already knew
“Happy Birthday to You” is one of the most frequently sung songs in the English language. Its melody comes from “Good Morning to All”, a song for schoolchildren published in 1893 by two sisters from Kentucky, Mildred and Patty Hill, both teachers.[1] For much of the twentieth century a music publishing company claimed the copyright and collected royalties whenever the song was performed in public, including in films and on television. This is why so many films used a different song, or cut away before the singing.
In 2013 a documentary film company that had been charged to use the song took the publisher to court. In 2015 a US federal judge ruled that the publisher's copyright claim covered only a particular piano arrangement, not the song's lyrics, and was not valid for the song itself. After a settlement in 2016 the song was treated as being in the public domain in the United States.[2] For more than half a century, therefore, a song sung at almost every child's party was officially owned by someone else, and nobody at the parties had been told.
The song is short, simple and almost always sung slightly too slowly and in at least two keys at once. The name in the third line is a known hazard: people who do not know whether the birthday person is “Rob” or “Robert” will traditionally sing both, making the third line the only part of the song performed as a compromise.