Kob Download Happy Birthday Stevie Wonder
- This song has no relation to the nursery rhyme of the general title.
Happy birthday is a popular song sung by a social activist Stevie Wonder. He was also cynosure of the campaign that led to celebrate Martin Luther King Junior‘s birthday as a nation holiday in United States. This song remarks the remembrance of this campaign and was part of wonder’s Hotter than July album!! Check out Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder on Amazon Music. Stream ad-free or purchase CD's and MP3s now on Amazon.com.
| 'Happy Birthday' | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Stevie Wonder | ||||
| from the album Hotter than July | ||||
| B-side |
| |||
| Released | September 29, 1980 | |||
| Format | 7' single, 12' single | |||
| Recorded | 1980 | |||
| Genre | R&B | |||
| Length | 5:53 | |||
| Label | Motown | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Stevie Wonder | |||
| Producer(s) | Stevie Wonder | |||
| Stevie Wonder singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Alternative cover | ||||
'Happy Birthday' is a 1981 single written, produced and performed by Stevie Wonder for the Motown label. Wonder, a social activist, was one of the main figures in the campaign to have the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. become a national holiday, and created this single to make the cause known.[1] Besides being released as a single, the song also appears on Wonder's album Hotter Than July.
Background[edit]
The song, one of many of Wonder's songs to feature the use of a keyboard synthesizer, features Wonder lamenting the fact that anyone would oppose the idea of a Dr. King holiday, where 'peace is celebrated throughout the world' and singing to King in the chorus, 'Happy birthday to you'. The holiday, he proposes, would facilitate the realization of Dr. King's dreams of integration and 'love and unity for all of God's children'.
Kob Download Happy Birthday Stevie Wonder Instrumental
Wonder used the song to popularize the campaign, and continued his fight for the holiday, holding the Rally for Peace Press Conference in 1981. United States PresidentRonald Reagan approved the creation of the holiday, signing it into existence on November 2, 1983. The first official Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, held the third Monday in January of each year, was held on January 20, 1986, and was commemorated with a large-scale concert, where Stevie Wonder was the headlining performer.
Although the single failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100, due to it not being released as a U.S. single; it charted on the R&B chart at No.70,[citation needed] and it became one of Wonder's biggest hits in the UK, reaching No.2 in the charts in August 1981.[2][not in citation given]
When Wonder performed the song at Nelson Mandela Day at Radio City Music Hall on July 19, 2009, he slightly changed the lyrics, 'Thanks to Mandela and Martin Luther King!' in that verse.
Wonder also performed this song at the Diamond Jubilee Concert in London for the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II.[3]
Personnel[edit]
Stevie Wonder Happy Birthday Live
- Stevie Wonder - Vocals, Synthesizer, Drums, Background Vocals, ARP synthesizer, Keyboards, Bass Melodeon
References[edit]
- ^'MLK Day: Why on Monday and what was Stevie Wonder's role?'. USA TODAY. Retrieved 2016-01-18.
- ^Chartstats.com - 'Happy Birthday' UK chart info
- ^'Stars perform at Diamond Jubilee concert'. BBC News. 2012-06-04. Retrieved 2012-06-06.
External links[edit]
- Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
Only a handful of artists have the cultural magnetism that enables their work to impact our lives, even beyond their musical comfort zone. It was Stevie Wonder‘s composition and release of ‘Happy Birthday,’ and his tireless campaigning, that led directly to the enshrinement of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, observed in the US for the first time in January 1986 and ever since.
The idea for a national holiday to mark the 15 January birthday of the great civil rights campaigner was building in momentum from soon after Dr. King’s shocking assassination in 1968. Several states enacted holidays on his birthday in the 1970s, including Illinois, Connecticut and Massachusetts, but Congress stopped short of passing a national day into law. In November 1979, despite the endorsement of President Jimmy Carter, the King Holiday Bill was defeated by five votes.
As professor and author James Honey, an expert on the activist, told USA Today in 2016: “This was the first holiday around a national figure who is not a president, and who is African American. Many in Congress did not want to recognise an African American that was thought of as a troublemaker by some in his day.” But despite many setbacks, the idea for the holiday refused to go away, vehemently championed by King’s widow, Coretta King Scott.
After the 1979 defeat of the bill, Wonder wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ and included it on his Hotter Than July album of 1980. The Motown superstar held the Rally for Peace press conference in 1981, when the track came out as a single. Perhaps ironically for a song spearheading an American campaign, it enjoyed its biggest success internationally, climbing to No. 2 in the UK.
In late 1983, Stevie and Coretta’s wishes were granted. President Ronald Reagan approved the holiday, to be observed on the third Monday in January each year. On 20 January 1986, as Americans observed the birthday of the great man with a holiday in his name, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was celebrated for the first time, and Wonder headlined a major concert to mark the occasion.
That first MLK Day was also observed, as Time magazine reported, with candlelight vigils, concerts, readings, teach-ins and religious services throughout the US, “occasions to recall one of the most painful and dramatic eras of American history.”
As Stevie had written in the lyric: “I just never understood/How a man who died for good/Could not have a day that would/Be set aside for his recognition.”
‘Happy Birthday’ is on Hotter Than July, which can be bought here.