B-side "Like the Seasons" Format 7-inch single Label White Whale | Released 1967 (1967) Length 2:50 | |
Genre Psychedelic pop
pop rock | ||
"Happy Together" is a 1967 song from the Turtles' album of the same name. Released as a single in February 1967, the song knocked The Beatles' "Penny Lane" out of the number one slot for three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the group's only chart-topper in the United States. "Happy Together" reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart in April 1967 and number 13 on Top 100 Singles of 1967 in Canada The song was written by Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon, former members of a band known as The Magicians. The song had been rejected a dozen times before it was offered to the Turtles, and the demo acetate was worn out.
Contents
- Composition
- Personnel
- Additional personnel
- Film
- Television
- Advertising
- Sport
- Books
- Cover versions
- Copyright lawsuit
- References
The Turtles' recording of the song later served as the centerpiece of a landmark common law copyright case.
Composition
The song is in the key of F-sharp minor, with the chorus in F-sharp major. The song ends on a Picardy third.
Personnel
Additional personnel
Film
The song has been featured in many movies, including:
Frank Alamo's French cover of the song was featured in the 2010 movie Get Him to the Greek and the Halloween TV special Scared Shrekless. The original song was featured in one of the trailers for the 2013 film The Great Gatsby.
Television
The song has been used in episodes of The Simpsons (such as "The Way We Weren't" and "Trilogy of Error") and in episodes of The Wonder Years, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, That '70s Show (sung by the cast), The Muppet Show (sung by guest star Florence Henderson with a set of Muppet Monsters and Frackles), Oz, Cupid (sung by Lisa Loeb), Scrubs, ER, America's Funniest Home Videos, the My Name Is Earl episode "Faked His Own Death", and the series finales of Daldalita, Two and a Half Men, and You, Me and the Apocalypse.
The song appeared in the "Bride of Hannibal" promo for the third season of Hannibal, focusing on the relationship between Hannibal Lecter and his psychiatrist Bedelia Du Maurier.
Advertising
The song was used in 1980s Golden Grahams adverts. In 1999, the song was used for a Super Smash Bros. advert where Mario, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, and Yoshi suddenly start fighting in a field of flowers. In New Zealand, Toyota used the song for its promotion of the Toyota Rav4 in 2006. In 2009, Ford used the song in Brazil for the promotion of Ford Focus. However, the Ford commercial featured its "employees" singing the song while they designed and manufactured the car rather than the original version of the song. Since the early 2010s, the song has been a feature of Mexican Airline AeroMéxico commercials, both in television and radio advertisements. In 2013, the song was used in the Dead Rising 3 video game commercial. In 2015, the song was covered in advertisements for the Plenti card. In November 2015, Coca-Cola featured the song from the commercial in the Philippines using their revised version. In January 2017, the song is played in the background of a Tim Horton's commercial (Canada) .
Sport
"Happy Together" is the official song of football club Melbourne City FC.
Books
In Stephen King's novel Gerald's Game, the psychotic burglar, necrophile, and cannibal Raymond Andrew Joubert is described to the protagonist Jessie Burlingame as singing this song in the back of a police cruiser after being apprehended breaking into a mausoleum.
Cover versions
"Happy Together" has been covered by artists as diverse as Mel Tormé, Captain and Tennille, The Nylons, The Piano Guys, Weezer, Petula Clark, Jason Donovan, Simple Plan, Caterina Valente, The Dollyrots, Blue Meanies, Donny Osmond, T.G. Sheppard (who would take his version into the country Top 10 in early 1979), Tahiti 80, Filter, Flobots, Tally Hall, Johnny Panic, and Miley Cyrus, whose version samples the original. Frank Alamo covered the song in 1967 in a French version entitled "Heureux Tous Les Deux (Happy Together)". There is also a Spanish cover, sung by Roberto Jordán, called "Juntos y Felices". In 1999, BMI named "Happy Together", with approximately five million performances on American radio, the 44th most-performed song in the United States of the 20th century, placing it in the same league as "Yesterday" by the Beatles and "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon and Garfunkel. Frank Zappa's performance on Fillmore East – June 1971 included Turtles vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman and bassist Jim Pons.
Kaylan and Volman also did a reggae remake of the song for the last Flo & Eddie album Rock Steady with Flo & Eddie. Hugo Montenegro's cover version was released as a single in 1969 and reached number 29 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart. The song has been covered by B. E. Taylor for his album, Love Never Fails. The song has also been sung by the Red Army Choir and the Leningrad Cowboys. In 2007 the song was used as a sample on the song "Ooh Ooh Baby" from Britney Spears' album Blackout.
It was also performed on the show American Idol on February 19, 2008, by David Cook, and on February 20, 2008, by Brooke White: both performances were released as live singles on the iTunes Store in 2008. On May 5, 2011, it was sung in a group performance by the top 5 contestants on the show's tenth season. On January 21, 2015, the song was featured on the TV series Stalker arranged and performed by the band SPiN.
Copyright lawsuit
Flo & Eddie, legal successors to the Turtles, filed a lawsuit in the New York Court of Appeals against Sirius XM Radio to establish common law copyright on their original recording of "Happy Together." As the song was recorded in 1967, five years before federal sound copyright was established, the group sought to establish that such recordings were covered under common law copyright, a nebulous form of copyright held at the state level, in the hopes of earning royalties from Sirius XM (as they did not write the song, they could only receive performance royalties). The Court of Appeals had previously ruled that such a common law copyright may exist in New York in the 2005 ruling Capitol Records, Inc. v. Naxos of America, Inc..
On December 20, 2016, the Court ruled that no such common law copyright exists in New York, and that Flo & Eddie could not claim performance rights.