Is it true that Paul McCartney owns the royalties to the song Happy Birthday To You!…?
A common rumor holds that Paul McCartney owns the publishing rights to “Happy Birthday to You,” but that rumor is false. Although Paul McCartney did buy up many song catalogs after seeing the publishing rights to most of his Beatles songs slip away in a series of bad business deals (his MPL Communications is now one of the world’s largest privately-owned music publishing firms and controls the rights to the Buddy Holly catalog, among others), he does not own (and never has owned) the publishing rights to “Happy Birthday to You.” (In yet another bit of irony, Michael Jackson, who was introduced to the benefits of song ownership by Paul McCartney himself, eventually outbid the former Beatle for the publishing rights to the Lennon-McCartney catalog.) Who does own the publishing rights to “Happy Birthday to You”? They were acquired by a New York accountant named John F. Sengstack when he bought the Clayton F. Summy Company in the 1930s; Sengstack eventually relocated the company to New Jer
