Who Wrote the Song Happy Birthday To You?

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Almost everyone on earth can sing this song, yet almost nobody can name the two women who wrote it. Their tune has been sung in kindergartens, in restaurants, on the Moon mission radio link, and at every birthday party you have ever been to. Here is the whole story, the original words, and what you are legally allowed to do with the song today.

Who wrote Happy Birthday To You?

The song was written by Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith Hill, two sisters from Louisville, Kentucky.

• Mildred J. Hill (1859 to 1916) was the composer. She was a trained pianist, an organist and a musicologist who studied and wrote about folk music.
• Patty Smith Hill (1868 to 1946) wrote the words. She was a kindergarten teacher who later became a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and an important figure in early childhood education.

So when people search for the composer of Happy Birthday, the answer is Mildred. When they ask who wrote the lyrics, the answer is Patty. The two names belong together, which is why you will usually see the song credited simply to the Hill sisters.

What song has the same tune as Happy Birthday?

This surprises people: the melody was not written for birthdays at all.

In 1893 the sisters published it in a schoolbook called Song Stories for the Kindergarten. The song was called Good Morning To All, and it was a greeting for teachers to sing with small children at the start of the day. Same melody, different words:

Good morning to you, good morning to you, good morning dear children, good morning to all.

Patty wrote the words to be short and easy, with only a handful of different notes, so that four and five year olds could learn them quickly. That simplicity is exactly why the tune spread so far.

How the birthday words got attached

Nobody signed a document declaring the change. The birthday version simply spread by ear, the way playground songs do. Children sang the greeting, someone swapped in birthday words, and the new version travelled from school to school.

The birthday lyrics began appearing in print in the early twentieth century, and turned up in songbooks of the 1920s, including a well known collection published by Robert H. Coleman in 1924. By the 1930s the song was on Broadway and in films, and it had become the birthday song of the English speaking world.

How old is the song?

The melody dates from 1893, so it is over 130 years old. The birthday lyrics as we sing them are a little younger, spreading through the early 1900s.

The lyrics

Here are the words, which is all most people are actually looking for:

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear (name), happy birthday to you.

That is the entire song. Four lines, one of them repeated three times, with the name of the birthday person dropped into the third line. There is no official second verse, although families invent their own, and children everywhere add a teasing extra line.

How long is the birthday song?

Sung at a normal pace, Happy Birthday To You lasts about ten to sixteen seconds. That is why it became the standard timer for washing your hands: two rounds of the song is roughly twenty seconds of scrubbing.

The song is short because it is built from four short phrases, and the third phrase contains the famous jump up to the highest note, the one that lands on the word birthday right before the name. That leap is the reason a group of relatives so often collapses into different keys halfway through.

Why it took until 2016 to become free

This is the strange part of the story. For decades, the song most of the world could sing from memory was owned by a company.

The Clayton F. Summy Company published the original 1893 book and later registered copyrights connected to the song, including piano arrangements in 1935. Through a chain of company sales, those rights ended up with Warner Chappell Music, which bought the catalogue in 1988. Warner Chappell maintained that the song was protected until 2030 and charged licence fees for commercial use, reportedly collecting around two million dollars a year.

That is why films and television shows so often cut away from the cake, or invented their own birthday tune.

In 2013 a documentary filmmaker who had been asked to pay a licence fee sued. The case, argued as Rupa Marya v. Warner Chappell Music, examined what the 1935 registration had actually covered.

• In September 2015, Judge George H. King ruled that the 1935 copyright covered only specific piano arrangements, not the lyrics themselves.
• In February 2016 the parties settled, with Warner Chappell agreeing to pay back fourteen million dollars in collected fees.
• In June 2016 a final judgment declared the song to be in the public domain.

In Europe the song passed into the public domain at the start of 2017, seventy years after Patty Hill died in 1946.

Can I use the song in a video now?

In the United States, yes. The melody and the traditional lyrics are public domain, so you can sing it, print it, record it, and use it in a video without paying anyone.

Two sensible cautions:

• A specific recording is a separate right. The song is free, but a famous artist's studio version of it is not. Sing it yourself, or use a track that is clearly licensed for reuse.
• A modern arrangement, remix or instrumental backing track can carry its own rights. Look for tracks marked public domain or royalty free, and keep a note of where you got the mp3.

Playing it yourself

The song is usually one of the first melodies a beginner learns, because it stays inside a small range and uses very few notes.

• On piano or keyboard it is often taught in C major or G major, at a relaxed tempo, with a simple left hand pattern under the melody.
• On guitar and ukulele three chords are enough for the whole song, which is why it is such a common first campfire tune.
• Free sheet music, chords, notes and tabs are easy to find precisely because the song is public domain now.

Because the melody is short, it is also a favourite for xylophone, kalimba, harmonica, violin and any instrument a child has just unwrapped. Karaoke versions and instrumental backing tracks are everywhere for the same reason, and the original melody sits comfortably in the key of G for most singers.

Why restaurants sing a different song

If you have ever had staff clap their way to your table singing something that was clearly not Happy Birthday, now you know why. During the decades when the song carried licence fees, chain restaurants wrote their own birthday jingles rather than pay to sing four short lines. Many kept those in house songs out of habit even after 2016, which is why searches for half remembered restaurant birthday lyrics are so common.

A few facts worth knowing

• It is widely cited as the most recognised song in the English language.
• It has been translated into dozens of languages, and many countries also keep a birthday song of their own.
• Astronauts have sung it in space: the crew of Apollo 9 sang it in orbit in March 1969.
• The melody is deliberately simple, which is the whole reason a kindergarten greeting became a global tradition.

Send the words as something better than a text

The lyrics are lovely, but a plain message of happy birthday to you looks the same as the forty other greetings arriving that day. You can keep the same words the Hill sisters wrote and still celebrate properly: write the name in, and share something people actually screenshot rather than scroll past.

1. Open the free fireworks card tool
2. Type Happy Birthday on the first line, then the person's name underneath
3. Pick a colour, gold and pink read well on phones
4. Download the video, or copy the link and send it in any chat app

There is no watermark, no sign up and no app to install, and it works the same on iPhone and Android. If you want more wording ideas first, browse the birthday wishes collection, or read how the birthday song sounds in other languages.