Seven years later, Hill sued that publisher for royalties over a licensing dispute, but then everyone made up, presumably content to just sit back and watch the money roll in. After a lawsuit fizzled out, she partnered with a publishing company to finally, officially copyright the song in 1935. Upon hearing it, Jessica Hill-sibling of Mildred and Patty-was pissed that her sisters were missing out on songwriting credit and compensation. In 1933, Irving Berlin used the “Good Morning to All” melody in his musical, As Thousands Cheer.

Lots of people have sued each other over it. But somewhere along the line, someone put the now-famous words to the melody, and by the mid-1930s the combo tune had pretty much become the standard birthday song.Ģ. You can credit the indelible melody to Kentucky sisters Mildred and Patty Hill, who wrote the original song-called “Good Morning to All,” with completely different lyrics-way back in 1893 as a musical greeting for kindergarten teachers to sing to their students every morning. (And for more fun and depressing b-day facts, discover What Your Birth Month Says About You.) So in honor of Facebook’s special day, here are five surprising facts about the iconic song-which, once again, even friggin’ babies know by heart.

And we’ll happily provide the prescription if it means more page views for us. which is actually a little weird, too, now that we think about it.įor whatever reason, it looks like America’s got a bad case of birthday fever. The Guinness Book of World Records named “Happy Birthday to You”-all 12 whopping words of it-the most recognizable song in the English language, yet more people searched for it last month than “Let It Go” from Frozen (#2), “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift (#3), and Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” (#4). Why, in the year 2015, would millions of Americans flock to Google to look up the one song that literally everyone in the world-including 2-year-olds!-knows all the words to? Did they forget how it goes? Was there some kind of quiz? Look, we’ve thought long and hard about this, and it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Want to hear something else that’s equally perplexing? The tune was Google’s most-searched song in January, according to the company’s trending charts. It’s crazy, but true-singing “Happy Birthday to You” in public is illegal. Hey, happy birthday, Facebook! We’d sing you a song, but it turns out we’d be breaking the law.

Crazy birthday song