Once upon a time.....for about 3/4 of a century, "Happy Birthday" was privately owned by Warner Music Group, and anyone who wanted to use it in a commercial enterprize had to pay big royalties to do so. But ever since 2014, a lawsuit that challenged Warner's ownership of the original song, based on the fact that the original copyright was for a song called "Good Morning to You", which had the lyrics "Good morning to you,
Good morning to you, Good morning dear children, Good morning to all". Only later were the words changed to "happy birthday". But that was enough for the judge in this lawsuit to side with the plaintifs and declare that Happy Birthday is now, and for the rest of time, in the PUBLIC DOMAIN!
I did not know this when I wrote this song. I wrote it as a birthday present to my wife. She's awesome! And at the end of the song, I decided to make an musical epilogue that was reminscent (but not exact) of the "Happy Birthday" song. But it was just when I was putting the finishing touches on each track that I discovered this news about Happy Birthday's recent entry into the cannon of works in the Public Domain. So I changed the epilogue from "reminiscent of" happy birthday to "the last 2 phrases" of Happy Birthday, now feeling a new sense of wonderful litigious immunity! Admittedly though......the melodic line that's played in those last bars of the epilogue were in fact written by the Mildred sisters, and if they weren't so greedy in making "Good Morning to You" into "Happy Birthday to You", they might still have ownership
of that musical phrase today. But because the universe has a sense of karmic humor, and they got far more than they deserved for far too long, they now have to suffer the injustice of us covering their song, and having absolutely no legal recourse whatsoever! Kinda like melodic double-jeopordy. mwa ha ha HAAAA!