Chris Messina has outed me on my secret plot to rid the world of the traditional “Happy Birthday” song. Aside from the fact that it has the least inspired lyrics of almost any song ever written, it is also not even in the public domain, but instead protected by a copyright until 2030. We need to open source the Happy Birthday song and release it under Creative Commons. Of course this is not a new idea. Kuro5hin has a great write-up on the legal issues surrounding “Happy Birthday”.
photo credit: Scott Beale
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I always ask my friends who wish to sing to me on my birthday to pick a few choice verses of the Viking Birthday Dirge. It draws the most interesting looks in restaurants…
i abhor the happy birthday song. nothing makes me less happy than when people sing it. a friend of mine in college made up a birthday dirge as a response. it went:
happy birthday, happy birthday
misery and despair, people dying everywhere
happy birthday, happy birthday
Sorry to burst your bubble, but my grandfather has been singing that song since before I was born. I’m actually trying to find who came up with it.
My grandfather wrote a birthday song that I think would be perfect:
Greetings on your natal day
May health and happiness come your way
and may life bless you when we say
happy birthday dear squidward
happy birthday to you!
Next time you run into me, I’ll sing it for you. Should be creative commons’d.
here, ten minutes later, I’ve uploaded it to You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBkuYva1VPI
so happy birthday anyway!
Sometime I will sing you the birthday song we had to sing when I worked at the Olive Garden. From the pasta we make to the lasagna we bake, wishing you a happy birthday…
There is a great scene in the Corporation where they mute the sound
during the singing of Happy Birthday and explain they used the $10,000 it would have cost them to include it to send a crew to LA to shoot an interview.