Since the “Happy Birthday to You” song has recently gone out of copyright, we’ve enhanced our collection of Birthday Songs around the World!

There are however two birthday songs that we know of that are widely sung and that are still under copyright.

One is a Portuguese Birthday Song called “Parabéns a você” (Congratulations).  It was written by Mrs. Bertha Celeste Homem de Mello. You can find the lyrics here.

The other copyrighted birthday song is from the Dominican Republic and is called “El Regalo Mejor” (The Best Gift). It was written by Ramón Rafael Casado Soler.

There’s a story about the origin of this song.  Massiel wrote to us about it as follows….

The origin of this song is awkward. It was a song written by four men who were imprisoned during Trujillo’s era in jail and they sang it all night long to distract the jail keepers while they escaped. Trujillo was a dictator and a villain. Nonetheless, this song has remained part of our culture since then and D.R. happens to be the first country in Latin America to have its own birthday song.

According to the author’s nephew, this story is apocryphal. He states that the song was actually written many years earlier, before his uncle got married.

You can read more about this song here (in Spanish).

Please feel free to share the birthday song that’s sung in your country in the comments below. You can find many other versions on our Birthday Songs around the World page.

Mama Lisa