Happy Birthday to You

One, two, three, GO!
 Happy happy birthday, from all of us to you!
We wish it was our birthday, so we could party too!
Happy happy birthday, may all your dreams come true!

We wish it was our birthday, so we could party too!
—The Emperor's New Groove

Isaac: Someone holds the copyright to "Happy Birthday"?
Dan: The representatives of Patty and Mildred Hill.

Isaac: ...Took two people to write that song?
—Sports Night episode 1x04, "Intellectual Property"

It may well be an old standard, but up until the middle-late 2010s the song "Happy Birthday to You" was not in the public domain. (The copyright expired in the European Union on January 1, 2017. In the United States, a federal court ruled in 2016 that the song is in the public domain and had been for decades, contrary to claims by Warner/Chappell Music.[1] Oh, and the copyright expired in 1985 in Canada. That makes this now a Discredited Trope, and possibly even a Dead Horse Trope.)

As a result, when a birthday is being celebrated on television or in the movies, it's fairly rare for those involved to actually sing "Happy Birthday to You." "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" is often substituted (British shows may use "A Fine Old English Gentleman" instead), unlike in the real world, where singing anything other than "Happy Birthday To You" is almost unheard of (except when the singers are the waitstaff of certain chain restaurants, for exactly the same reason). Given the events cited above, this will no doubt change -- in fact, it has already changed for many of those chain restaurants -- but for now nearly every work you'll encounter will probably be using an alternative or The Jimmy Hart Version.

However, while the lyrics to "Happy Birthday to You" were under copyright, the melody was not. It was borrowed from an older song, "Good Morning to All", the copyright on which expired decades ago. So, instrumental or foreign-language versions were exempt from this rule.

The fact that a little ditty sung thousands of times a day around the world, and which only contains five words (not counting the person's name), was subject to copyright laws was serious Snark Bait. That you could be sued for realistically portraying a North American birthday party was mind-boggling. This case of copyright laws gone too far was often subject to Lampshade Hanging. As it turned out, Warner/Chappell's claim to the song's copyright turned out to be so specious as to be all but fraudulent.

Examples of Happy Birthday to You include:

Anime

  • Space Runaway Ideon second movie had children singing it...right after the Kill'Em All slaughterfest.
  • In Ai Yori Aoshi, the Japanese vocal track used "Happy Birthday to You", while the English dub track substituted a different song.
  • In Azumanga Daioh, after Yukari's class offers her a belated birthday present, she triumphantly belts out a Gratuitous English rendition of "Happy Birthday To You."
  • The Sakura Taisen TV series has an episode where the mostly-Asian team tries to celebrate Iris' birthday in the Western manner to which she is accustomed, including an attempt at singing an original "happy birthday" song. Kanna is still singing bits of the song to herself several episodes later...
  • In an episode of Keroro Gunsou, Keroro gets Mutsumi to compose an original birthday song for Natsumi's surprise party. Lampshaded in the dub, where Keroro tells Mutsumi that he's in charge of "non-copyright-infringing birthday song composition."
  • A particularly soul-crushing variant occurs in an episode of Fist of the North Star, with little Lynn singing the most depressing rendition of the song you'll ever hear after the birthday girl's brother is murdered by bandits.
  • The Japanese dub of Nightwalker uses the traditional melody, although with different lyrics, in one episode. The same scene in the English dub does the same, with another set of lyrics.
  • Mayo Chiki has an original birthday song composed for Kureha's birthday. Compared to other substitutions, it's not a bad song.
  • "Happy Birthday to You" is sung - in English - in the original Japanese version of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. This is a good trick, since Nadia is set in 1889 and the song was written in 1893. (Mind you, the story was already an Anachronism Stew by the point the song was sung.) For obvious reasons, ADV changed the song for the English dub.

Film

  • In The Kentucky Fried Movie, a character remembers his name by singing "Happy Birthday to You." The directors' commentary notes that that one bit cost them $10,000 (roughly 1.5% of the film's budget).
  • Frank's parents sing "Happy Birthday" via a pre-recorded message in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • In the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the main cast sing "Happy Birthday" to Rocky, but are cut off by Frank N. Furter when the song is near completion.
    • ...And then the audience usually finishes it for them: "Happy birthday, fuck you!"
  • The Room. They actually paid for the rights to the song.
  • During Beaver's birthday on the Leave It to Beaver movie, as everyone sings "Happy Birthday," two of the kids briefly interrupt with "You smell like a wino."
  • In the documentary The Corporation it is claimed that Warner/Chappell charges up to $10,000 for the song to appear in a film. To drive the point home, the sound of the song on archive film is muted, and the narrator explains that they'd rather spend the money to send a crew to Los Angeles to shoot an interview.
  • In Rom Com The Wish List, the party guests sing "We Wish You a Happy Birthday."
  • Ladder 49: Actually sung at Jack's daughter Katie's birthday party.

Live Action TV

  • Police Squad!! used the copyrighted tune in one episode when it was originally broadcast, but because of rights issues replaced it with a far funnier droning dirge of a birthday song for subsequent home video release.
    • This troper's (UK Region 2) copy of the DVD still has the performance of "Happy Birthday."
  • One episode of X-Play based around Adam's birthday had fun with this, as his cohost informed him that nobody cared enough about him to spend money on the rights to "Happy Birthday." Instead they opted to have the wait staff from a local restaurant do their birthday song instead.
  • Some shows that are predominantly African-American use the chorus of Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday" instead. That may also be under copyright, but it's "in sync" with the "hot urban" lifestyle.
  • An Internet example: The Funday Pawpet Show have their own birthday song:

"This is your birthday song,
It isn't very long."

  • A subplot in an episode of Sports Night involves Danny being fined for singing "Happy Birthday to You" on the air, and subsequently trying to find public-domain songs to sing to each of his co-workers. The episode, quoted at the top, also misidentifies the copyright holders.
  • An episode of 30 Rock got around this by having the characters sing it in German. (This occurred at the birthday party of a fictional Austrian prince.)
  • iCarly hangs a lampshade on it when the characters try to explain why they are in Sadist Teacher Mrs. Briggs' house.

"It's your birthday! Let's sing a Public Domain birthday song! 'For she's a jolly good fellow...'

    • In another episode, at Sam's birthday party, they begin to sing "Happy Birthday," only for Freddie to shout out "Not P.D.!" They switch to "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow."
  • The TV show Lost in Space celebrated the birthday of one of the characters by doing a song that began "Today is Penny's birthday" done to the tune of "For (S)He's a Jolly Good Gellow."
  • On Are You Being Served?, the floor staff discovered through some incredibly subtle hints that it was Mrs. Slocombe's birthday, and did various things in preparation, including practicing singing "Happy Birthday to You." They also discovered that they didn't actually know her given name, and test the variable portion of the song with different syllables:

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, dear ahh-ahhhhh...

  • An episode of the short-lived CBC adaptation of Douglas Coupland's jPod had video game programmers attempt to get rights to use the song by kidnapping the rights holder, who just happens to be Canadian. Especially weird, considering that as noted above, the song has been public domain in Canada for years!
    • Not weird at all, assuming they would sell the game outside of Canada...
  • This was actually sung on a few Sesame Street episodes, such as when the cast celebrated Big Bird's sixth birthday in the 1991 special Big Bird's Birthday OR Let Me Eat Cake. Of course, Sesame Workshop has a hassle getting the song to be sung on home video releases; one episode had to have a brief scene cut just because a character sings the first line of the song!
    • An episode in which the cast visits Puerto Rico had them sing it in Spanish, since only the English lyrics are copyrighted, not the melody.
  • On America's Funniest Home Videos, videos that feature the song replace it with a wordless version (la la la).
  • An episode of Carranger does use the copyrighted version for Blue Racer's birthday.
  • In an episode of Get Smart, in order to get Fang (the dog) to blow out a bomb's fuse they sing "Happy Birthday" to him.
  • Subverted on Moonlighting, when David Addison and the detective agency's staff throw a surprise party for Maddie Hayes. Instead of either "Happy Birthday" or any public domain options, they sing a different copyrighted song, "Birthday" by The Beatles ("Ya say it's your birthday! It's my birthday too, yeah!")
  • Lampshaded in Double Dare, when Harvey began singing a different version of the song (same lyrics, different cadence), but cuts himself off before he sings the sixth word, saying Nickelodeon would have to pay royalties if he sang another word.
  • Upon the release of the Greeed in Kamen Rider OOO, Kosei sings along (badly) to an operatic vinyl record of the song. Which is then overlayed upon the Greeed massacring his foundation's motorcycle corps. He does the same without the record in the background upon the titular rider's first transformation and battle. Both times, he bakes cakes in their honor. And this is the first episode.
  • Played with in an episode of Community. The episode opens with them mostly through the song, only singing the last "to you" on screen. Then one character wonders aloud why they didn't sing the actual "happy birthday" part. It's then justified in-universe in that the party is for Troy, who as a Jehovah's Witness technically isn't allowed to celebrate his birthday.
  • The original version was sung twice in Look Around You at Pam's birthday party, but a new verse was put in between the more familiar one:

Birthdays are a time for celebration
A time when all around you is good cheer
So please all raise your glass
And party may you laugh
And toast this merry fellow that is here!

Theatre

  • In On the Town, the emcee at Diamond Eddie's invites the crowd to sing "Happy Birthday" for a "man we all know and love" whose name means nothing at all to the main characters or the audience.

Web Comics

  • This Partially Clips cartoon has fun with it.

Web Original

  • On the web version of the Homestar Runner short "Strong Bad Sings", the song plays during the "Strong Mad Forgets the Words To His Favorites" scene. On the DVD version, it's changed to Hot Cross Buns.
  • When Michelle sings "Happy Birthday" to herself in the Scrambled Eggs comic "Leap of Doom," she uses the lyrics for the This Loser Is You version. (Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo...)

Western Animation

  • In King of the Hill, to celebrate his birthday, Bill uses an incredibly awkward replacement song which goes "Someone's got a birthday, I wonder who!" over and over and over again!
  • In The Powerpuff Girls episode "Birthday Bash" everyone is about to sing the song. However, they are quickly stopped by the girls, who are in a hurry to get to opening their presents.
  • In an episode of Metalocalypse, Murderface is treated to a birthday-themed death metal song: "Many years ago today/Something grew inside your mother...it was YOU"
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force references this trope in the episode "Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary," by having Shake commission Zakk Wylde to write a new, heavy-metal birthday song. It's all an attempt to cash in on royalties (expecting everyone to replace the traditional song with his new one and then pay him for using it).
  • Spoofed in an episode of Futurama. While celebrating Nibbler's birthday, all of the cast sing a completely different song (in lyrics and melody), which is assumed to be a version that was adopted sometime in the future. At the end, Fry can be heard singing "And you smell like one, too!"
  • In Bionic Six, the characters sing a song loosely based on the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah.
  • Dora the Explorer got away with using the song on one of its episodes thanks to it being sung in Spanish.
  • Pingu also managed to feature the song in the episode when Pingu celebrated his birthday, but then again, his friends were singing the song in Penguinese (a gibberish language everyone speaks on the show), so they were able to get away with avoiding the copyrighted lyrics.
  • As the page-quote above indicates, in The Emperors New Groove this trope is Lampshaded by the staff of Mudka's Meat Hut when they celebrate Yzma's supposed birthday.
    • The American Dragon: Jake Long episode "Bite Father, Bite Son" has a similar birthday song. Same melody, but slightly different lyrics.
  • The writers of Arthur simply wrote a new birthday song for one episode.
  • An episode of The Berenstain Bears entitled "Too Much Birthday" (based on the book of the same name) has everyone sing to the tune of "London Bridge,"

"Happy birthday, Sister Bear,
Sister Bear, Sister Bear,
Happy birthday Sister Bear,
We all love you!"

  • In The Simpsons, a cut-rate Chuck E. Cheese establishment has a cheap animatronic animal band singing "You're the birthday - you're the birthday - you're the birthday - boy or girl!"
    • In another episode, a group of waiters sing "Happy First 'A'", to Bart, when he celebrated that.
    • A classic early episode had a guy who claimed to be Michael Jackson serenade Lisa; "Lisa, it's your birthday...happy birthday, Lisa!"[2]
      • Earlier in the same episode Lisa sang a forlorn "Happy Birthday to Me" to herself, since she was the only one in the family who remembered her birthday.
    • And who can forget the famous/infamous "Happy Birthday" song The Ramones played to Mr. Burns in his birthday. Just 15 seconds, and just the "Happy Birthday to YOU!" chorus, and they left the poor old man trembling and angry.

Mr. Burns: Have the Rolling Stones killed...
Smithers: But, sir...

    • In the first season episode where Homer buys Marge a bowling ball after forgetting her birthday, they go to a restaurant with singing waiters, who do sing the actual song "Happy Birthday to You."
    • In the season 5 episode "Rosebud," Burns and Smithers are discussing the preparations for Burns' upcoming birthday:

Smithers: On another topic, the preparations for your birthday have begun.
Mr. Burns: I won't get what I really want.
Smithers: No one does.
Smithers has a fantasy of a naked Burns popping out of a cake
Mr. Burns: (singing à la Marilyn Monroe) Happy birthday, Mr. Smithers...
Smithers: Mmmmm...

    • This troper recalls a Simpsons comic book issue when Homer and his pals became volunteer firefighters, and when they realized they couldn't do anything when a fair caught on fire, Ralph comes up with an idea to put out the fire, by singing the birthday song and blowing it out like birthday candles. The whole cast begins to sing the song, but then the Blue-Haired Lawyer comes in warning them about the royalties of the song they'd need to pay to sing it before he passes out from the smoke. So Lisa writes up a new unique birthday song ("...pleasant birthday to that person, we're glad you're not dead!") and then they all blow on the fire, which actually extinguishes the blaze!
  • In The Venture Bros., Dr. Girlfriend was going to surprise The Monarch wearing panties and a strategically placed bow (and boots and pillbox hat) singing "Happy Birthday" a la Marilyn Monroe to JFK, but instead sang "For He's a Sexy Good Fellow." In that stevedore voice of hers.
  • An episode of Garfield and Friends gives us this little number.
  • Aversion (sort of): In the Wallace and Gromit film The Wrong Trousers, Wallace gives Gromit a birthday card which plays an instrumental of "Happy Birthday to You." But even though the melody is supposedly not copyrighted, the producers were still forced to replace it (with "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow") after the first video release.
  • Home Movies has an episode at Fenton's birthday party, with a birthday song so annoying and asinine that it's an object lesson against copyrighting tunes like 'Happy Birthday'.
  • In Adventure Time, the party-goers at Finn's birthday party are only heard singing the last two words to the song.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic had Pinkie Pie sing a variation to the Cake's newborn twins ("Happy happy Birthday to you and you today...") but she gets cut off by the nurse before getting any further (singing in a maternity ward and all). She's later able to finish it, albeit as "Happy Monthiversary," which celebrates the twins'... well, one month anniversary of their birth. Witness it here.
  • South Park: In a Christmas Episode, the lonely birthday boy was singing "Happy Birthday to Me".

Real Life

  • Chain restaurants like Applebee's, Bennigan's, and TGI Friday's usually make a fuss over customer birthdays, but the staff must sing an original corporate birthday song or chant because it is a "public performance"; if they were to sing "Happy Birthday" it would have to be licensed and paid for.
    • Since, as previously mentioned, it's only the lyrics that are copyrighted, not the melody, this tends not to be the case at foreign-food places; for example, a certain Italian chain restaurant sings a Pavarotti-esque rendition of Happy Birthday in Italian.
    • With the 2016 ruling in the United States, many of these places have switched back to "Happy Birthday" rather than waste the time previously spent teaching their waitstaff the old company birthday song.
  • Until they got an incredible amount of flak, the rights holders to the song were threatening to sue the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts for use of the song (without, of course, having purchased a performing rights license) at campfires and scouting events. The bad publicity wasn't just loud, it was positively deafening, so much so that they agreed not to do so.
  • Italian rock band Elio e le Storie Tese had the song "Al mercato di Bonn" removed from their 2003 album "Cicciput", because it was about the discovery that Beethoven wrote the melody for "Happy Birthday to You", and thus contained a sample of the song, lyrics and all. Luckily for the fans, they managed to "accidentally" broadcast the song during a popular radio show.
  1. ↑ Ironically, filmmaker Jennifer Nelson was doing a documentary on "Happy Birthday" and had paid US$1500 to Warner/Chappell to secure the rights to actually use the song in her film. Then her research for the film turned up several bogus/dubious links in the chain of ownership Warner/Chappell claimed gave them copyright to the song, along with legal experts who believed the song was public domain. She sued for her money back in 2013, and in September 2015 federal judge George H. King ruled that Warner/Chappell could not prove that it had ever held the copyright to the song; at the final settlement in June 2016, Warner/Chappell ended up paying out US$14 million to those it had charged for licenses over the years, and the song was definitely ruled as being in the public domain. Prior to this, Warner/Chappell had been raking in approximately US$2 million a year on "Happy Birthday" licenses.
  2. ↑ (Actually written by Jackson, but credited to "W.A. Mozart" on the Songs in the Key of Springfield CD.)
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