> I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time.
> The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times.
Read the story. The authors actually did a lot of work on Happy Birthday. (They had a couple of conflicting goals and did a lot of testing.)
While short little melodies are trivial to write, HB isn't just any short little melody. Disagree? Come up with a few that work as well. Riches await.
I read the story. It claims to be "a product of a highly focused, laborious effort to write a song that was extremely simple to sing yet musically interesting and emotionally expressive,
undertaken by a composer and an educator who happened to be sisters."
I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort." And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits. If the song was still "good morning to all" then it would be just another song. The only reason it has any monetary value is because it became associated with birthdays.
> The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times.
Read the story. The authors actually did a lot of work on Happy Birthday. (They had a couple of conflicting goals and did a lot of testing.)
While short little melodies are trivial to write, HB isn't just any short little melody. Disagree? Come up with a few that work as well. Riches await.