Sorry, Stevie. This is how Black folks will forever sing ‘Happy Birthday’
Learn it. Use it. Because none of us want to go back to that sad funeral-marchy version.
“When did Black people get together and change the birthday song? I missed the meeting.”
You and just about everyone else, bruh.
Someone — we’re really not sure who — lit up “Happy Birthday,” changed it from a song into an event, and made social media go crazy. And for all of us, there is no turning back. This new song is the only way.
What Gracie’s Corner did for the kids and the ABCs, this “Happy Birthday” has done for grown folks. We can finally bop to “Happy Birthday.”
A TikTok video started making the rounds early this summer with a new hip-hop-tinged version of the traditional birthday tune, complete with new lyrics, harmonies, rap and some serious bouncing. It’s a bop that lets you Dougie, Superman, Prep, Soulja Boy, Bankhead Bounce, Hit the Quan or Nae Nae.
Sorry, Stevie. Your classic version of “Happy Birthday,” a pop tune that honors Dr. Martin Luther King, doesn’t get your hips moving. Toe-tapping? Sure. But slingin’ hips? Nope.
Jennifer Hudson did her best to kick up the standard vanilla version of Happy Birthday. She did a nice job, which is to be expected because she could sing the alphabet and win a Grammy. But it’s not something that’ll make you start to move in your seat.
Whitney’s soulful and gospel-laced “Happy Birthday” is, as usual, spectacular, but good luck singing that, with runs and notes higher than the Empire State’s rooftop.
But this birthday tune? Ah-huh.
First, a little history since we should all know where things come from.
Two sisters, Mildred and Patty Smith Hill, wrote the song, “Good Morning to All” in 1893 for children in a kindergarten in Louisville, Kentucky. Mildred was a teacher, and Patty was the principal.
The sisters copyrighted their song that year, according to the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Still, some 31 years later, in 1924, the song appeared in an unauthorized songbook. While the song carried the original title, someone altered the lyrics in the second stanza to “Happy Birthday to You,” the Hall of Fame wrote.
Over time, the lyrics changed even more until the tune morphed into the song we know today.
Make that the song we knew today. Because this new birthday song, a product of the ingenuity of Black people, blows it away.
The new official Black people’s birthday song kicks off with a short countdown, then the song starts with the words we all know: “Happy Birthday to You.” And that’s where the similarity ends because the crowd breaks out into an obviously well-rehearsed R&B jam.
The camera focuses on a woman who rolls her arms and hits something like a Bankhead Bounce. Then we see a crowd of people snapping their fingers, clapping hands in the air and improvising bop along the way.
The singing’s terrific — especially the freestyling — but so are the lyrics:
I want to say Happy Birthday to you (repeated four times)
Now close your eyes, make a wish, think about it, and blow out your candle.
And if that wasn’t enough, the crowd does its best Lil Wayne and in this version seriously breaks down the beat by moving from song to rap by spelling out Happy Birthday. It’s kind of like when Aretha spelled out “Respect” in her classic tune. The beat and the jam were more than enough, but Aretha’s R-E-S-P-E-C-T turned the tune into an anthem.
Freestyling and then rapping “Happy Birthday” isn’t anthem-like, but it shows the creativity and ingenuity of Black people.
(There’s another version that replaces the rap with a serious bopping freestyle. Which is better? That’s like choosing between filet and lobster. Just have both. In this case, watch both.)
Since the social success of this video, others have come out with songs ranging from serious to not-so-serious.
For example, the popular YouTuber Jay Nadaj, known for his comedy videos in which he often plays characters in wigs, released his “How Black People Change up the Birthday Song” in August. It’s entertaining, funny and irreverent. But it doesn’t make you want to hit the dance floor.
Now that we have a new birthday song, someone needs to come up with a dance to accompany it.
You know that’s coming.
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