Do you remember telling restaurant staff that someone in your party had a birthday and watching the employees gather around your table and sing a birthday song that they had created? Did you ever wonder why they didn’t just sing “Happy Birthday?” Well, until September 2015, the song was copyrighted, and if a restaurant wanted to sing the song to customers, the restaurant had to pay a fee to do so!

Now, the copyright only pertains to certain piano arrangements, so if a restaurant wants to use the song, or if you want to post a video of yourself singing it, that is completely acceptable because it is now in the public domain! (Check out NPR’s article about it, here.)

If the song was copyrighted for so long, why don’t we have more birthday songs? (I don’t mean the restaurant birthday songs. 😉 )

We have the Beatles’ “Birthday.”

Although it is an extremely fun birthday song, I have no memories of singing this around a birthday cake. 😉

When I was in college, I found a fun birthday song that I started singing on people’s birthdays. 🙂 I think it’s important to entertain your inner child, so when I was in college, I came across this adorable educational children’s show called It’s a Big Big World. It’s a show about jungle puppets, and the main character is an ADORABLE sleepy sloth. 😀  (I watched this show in between classes. 😉 ) One day, there was an episode in which the animals celebrated someone’s birthday. Unfortunately, I could not find a video of it, but you can listen to the song, here. Did people find it annoying when I sang this birthday song to them? Perhaps! 😀

Do you have any birthday songs that you like to sing when you celebrate birthdays that are different than the traditional “Happy Birthday”?