"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you" We all know the tune, the words, and the embarrassed look on your loved ones faces when its sung to them loudly in a restaraunt, but is it the same all over the world? Does the same melody exist everywhere and only the language is changed? I wanted to look into this and find out if this song is shared all over the world as something that unites us all. The answer is difficult because the song can be found all over the world in different languages, but it seems that it is not the traditional song for all major countries.
The melody to the song is used all over the world. Infact, the song has been translated into eighteen different languages and is shared in most of the countries of the world. While the instruments are different, the basic melody and the message stays the same pretty much everywhere. If you want to hear examples of what the song sounds like in other countries, simply search YouTube for the song and country that you want to hear it in. Most of the results I got were amazingly the same!
I found it interesting that it seems that no matter the conflicts between countries, this song seems to surpass racial, religious, and all other boundaries. This is the one song sung all over the world without any other country banning it from the radio waves, internet, or any other source controlled by the government.
It's amazing that a simple song that you learn as a child growing up can be something so much larger than what you ever thought, but the facts are there. "Happy Birthday" is the most sung song all over the world and holds the Guiness Book of World Records position for such, followed in second and third by "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" and "Auld Lang Syne". The melody formed originally by the song, "Good Morning to All' by the sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill, it is the one song that can, in one way, unites us all.