Happy Together (song)


"Happy Together" is a song by American rock band the Turtles from their third studio album Happy Together. The song was written by Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon, arranged by Chip Douglas, and produced by Joe Wissert.
Released as a single in February 1967, the song knocked the Beatles' "Penny Lane" out of the number one slot on the US Billboard Hot 100 and remained atop the chart for three weeks. It was the group's only chart-topper in the United States. "Happy Together" also reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart in April 1967 and number 2 on the Canadian Top Singles chart in Canada.

Background

The song was written by Garry Bonner and Alan Gordon, former members of the Magicians. It had been rejected a dozen times before it was offered to the Turtles, and the demo acetate was worn out.''
The song was arranged by Chip Douglas. Turtles singer Mark Volman said, “Chip was, besides being a really fine bass player and excellent singer, also a great arranger, who did most of the arrangements on ‘Happy Together.’ He is very instrumental in what would be thought of as the production.”

Composition

"Happy Together" was originally published in the key of F#m in common time with a tempo of 120 beats per minute. Kaylan's vocals span from B3 to F#5 in the song.

Critical reception

Denise Sullivan of AllMusic called the song "serious, Beatles/Beach Boys conceptual pop" with a "sparse, acoustic guitar and handclap arrangement". She felt that the Turtles had combined their "pop, folk, psychedelia, and Zombies-style harmony expertise into one song", and noted the song's contradiction of being a "rock & roll song with a martial beat" but which came very close to "bubblegum" pop. She concluded that the song is "pop perfection" and "a most sublime slice of pop heaven."

Personnel

Additional personnel

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

All-time charts

Certifications

Cover versions

"Happy Together" has been covered by artists as diverse as Hugo Montenegro, Tony Orlando and Dawn, T.G. Sheppard, the Nylons, and the most successful cover by Captain & Tennille, Jason Donovan had the most successful cover version in the UK reaching #10.
Non-charting versions include those by Mel Tormé, the Piano Guys, Weezer, Petula Clark, Simple Plan, Caterina Valente, Donny Osmond, Odyssey, Tahiti 80, Tally Hall, Gerard Way featuring Ray Toro and Johnny Panic whose version samples the original.
Frank Alamo covered the song in 1967 in a French version entitled "Heureux Tous Les Deux ". 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 the "Fillmore East – June 1971" album included Turtles vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman and bassist Jim Pons, as they were all members of Zappa's band The Mothers during that time period.
Norwegian comedy group Prima Vera recorded a version with altered lyrics titled "Så Lykkelig I Sverige" from their album Brakara.
Hugo Montenegro's cover version was released as a single in 1969 from his album Good Vibrations, 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.
Industrial rock band Filter covered the song for The Stepfather soundtrack in 2009.
In 2002 and 2018, American rock band Weezer performed a cover version of the song live at several of their concerts. The cover was described by Doug MacCash of The Times-Picayune as "fierce yet faithful", taking "that chunk of 50-year-old bubblegum and chew it into grungy rock n roll glory". In January 2019, the song was included on their surprise cover album.
In 2020, EDM producers Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and Bassjackers released a big room cover of the song.

In popular culture

Jim Bessman reported for Billboard that the "key usage in the acclaimed movie" Adaptation. is "as a means of juxtaposing a soundtrack song against the story's mood, à la 'As Time Goes By' in Casablanca". Bessman goes on to say that "the song's inclusion in Adaptation has also spurred the solo side of Kaylan's career."
The 1987 film "Making Mr. Right" uses a unique remix of the Turtles recording as the movie's rousing finale. This extended version does not appear in the film's official soundtrack album, only in the film itself.
Bessman also notes the use of the song in Freaky Friday and two episodes of The Simpsons. It was also featured in The Simpsons Movie.
It was 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.
The Turtles' version of the song was used in a commercial for the game Super Smash Bros., and Weezer's cover of the song was used in the Co-Op trailer for the game Far Cry 5.
The song was featured in the first trailer for the 2019 film, . The song was also featured in the soundtrack of the 2019 film, The Angry Birds Movie 2.
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.
In July 2019, the song was used in juxtaposition to the "guns and murder" in a trailer for the game Borderlands 3. In 2020, the song was remixed by Sir Ivan.

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. The Court of Appeals had previously ruled that such a common law copyright may exist for the sale of recordings 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 for public performances of a sound recording, and that Flo & Eddie could not claim royalties.
On March 20, 2016, Scottish rock band Biffy Clyro released their single "Wolves of Winter", which originally featured the lyric "we have the chance to be happy together" in the pre-chorus, sung in a similar manner to the Turtles' recording. However, the lyric was changed due to copyright infringement, becoming "we have the chance to survive the winter", as sung in the second pre-chorus.