THE TUNE
A classroom greeting
The Hill sisters wrote Good Morning to All to be extremely simple to sing yet musically interesting, as a greeting for kindergarten classes.
Follow the timeline
THE STORY OF THE BIRTHDAY SONG
It started as
good morning.
The world's best-known birthday song began as a classroom hello.
In 1893 two sisters in Louisville, Kentucky, published Good Morning to All, a greeting simple enough for young children to sing. Somebody swapped in birthday words, and nobody knows for sure who sang them first.
SINCE 1893 four short lines
Follow the timeline- A tune made for children
- Words swapped in later
- Now free to sing
- One melody, many birthdays
THE SHORT ANSWER
Old tune,
new words.
The melody is from 1893.
The birthday words caught on in the early 1900s.
THE WORDS
Birthday lyrics take over
From the 1910s, as birthday parties grew more popular, songbooks printed the melody with the birthday words. By 1935 it was the standard birthday song.
How it spread
THE RIGHTS
Free to sing today
After decades of copyright claims, a US court found the claim invalid in 2015, and the song's copyright expired in the EU on 1 January 2017.
See the numbers
WHY IT CAUGHT ON
Built for
small voices.
The sources point to a few reasons a classroom greeting became the song everyone knows.
Simple on purpose
The sisters aimed for a song that was extremely simple to sing yet musically interesting and emotionally expressive.
Easy to change
The greeting was meant to be adapted: a Louisville curator notes it could become "Good Friday to you" on a Friday.
Spread by songbooks
Several 1920s songbooks printed the birthday version, and it appeared in films and on Broadway.
Sung everywhere
Guinness World Records has described it as one of the most frequently sung songs in the English language.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
A small song,
a big bill.
One figure on what the licences earned,
one on how far the words have travelled.
$2m+ a year
Estimated yearly licensing fees, as of 2010
The Copyright Office's 2010 newsletter said the song was estimated to bring in more than $2 million a year in licensing fees for commercial uses.
LICENCES · US COPYRIGHT OFFICE
$14m
Fees agreed to be paid back to licensees
In February 2016 the publisher claiming the copyright agreed to pay back $14 million to those who had licensed the song, and a final judgment followed that June.
SETTLEMENT · 2016
In the UK, as across the EU, musical works are usually protected for 70 years after the author's death. The last surviving sister died in 1946, so the EU copyright ran out on 1 January 2017.
A QUICK TIMELINE
How the song
came together.
Pick a moment to see what happened. The bar shows how much of the song we sing today was in place by then.
Based on the US Copyright Office's Copyright Notices (2010), Smithsonian magazine and encyclopedia sources. General history, not legal advice.
HOW THE WORDS SPREAD
Nobody knows
the first party.
The complete birthday words first appeared in print as the last four lines of a 1901 children's poem, with no mention of singing them. The first dated book pairing them with the Good Morning to All tune is from 1911.
A law professor who researched the song told Smithsonian magazine there is no doubt the sisters wrote the melody. "We just don't know who first sang 'Happy Birthday' to that tune. We don't know whose birthday it was."
Questions
Questions people ask
Who wrote the Happy Birthday tune?
The melody comes from Good Morning to All, published in 1893 by sisters Mildred and Patty Hill of Louisville, Kentucky, although some sources say the attribution is disputed.
Was Happy Birthday really under copyright?
A company claimed copyright based on a 1935 arrangement. In 2015 a US federal judge ruled that this copyright covered only a specific piano arrangement, not the lyrics or melody.
Is it public domain now?
Yes. A 2016 settlement led a US court to declare it in the public domain, and its copyright expired in the European Union on 1 January 2017.
When did the birthday words first appear?
The full text appeared as the last four lines of a 1901 poem. Words and tune together appear in a dated book from 1911 and in print in 1912.
How many languages is it sung in?
Its basic lyrics have been translated into at least 18 languages, according to Wikipedia's article on the song.
Sources
- US Copyright Office: Copyright Notices, April 2010, Happy Birthday to Famous Song (PDF)
- Smithsonian magazine: The Forgotten Sisters Behind 'Happy Birthday to You'
- Wikipedia: Happy Birthday to You
- GOV.UK: How long copyright lasts
Updated