It is the most-sung song in the world. Everyone across the globe has crooned it. Image Credit: Raymond B According to a source as eminent as the Guinness Book of Records, it is the most famous English song. Translated into 19 languages, sung in over 143 films and hundreds of adverts, it is also, as we know, a tune which brings as much shame as it does happiness. What we do not know as much, is that this must-have song at children’s parties is also one of the most lucrative in history. Up until 2015, singing “Happy Birthday” in public could cost you dear, very dear. And according to law, you could have had to pay up for singing this out loud, for instance in a restaurant. Before this date, the Warner/Chappell Music label held the rights for the song which brought in some 2 million dollars per year. Some exploitations were billed at over 100,000 dollars. And there was no way around it. Neither “Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder — too hard to sing for novices — nor the proposed alternative (and strangely melancholic) song by Monk Turner and Fascinoma managed to compete. Nothing can replace the six notes and four bars in people’s heads. After all what can be done against something so popular? Nothing, except to change the law. In 2013, Jennifer Nelson, independent film producer, exasperated for having to pay out 1,500 dollars to use the song in a documentary referred the case to justice so as to call into question the validity of Warner/Chappell’s copyright. To whom does “Happy Birthday” actually belong? A difficult question to which Los Angeles Federal Court would provide a response: to everyone. Made public in September 2015, the judge’s decision brought an end to the absurd exploitation of a popular rumour dating over a century.