Since popular music became a global industry, a handful of songs
have outshone, outperformed and outlasted all the others...
MUSIC: "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve
That song has so much magic that it's scary.
These songs have sold more copies, had more cover versions,
and been played more often, in more places
than any other songs in the world.
It has been played 10 million times on American radio.
I'm going to reveal for the first time the ten songs
which have earned the most money for the people who wrote them.
That's a lot of money.
Where's it all gone?
Ten great songs,
each with its own extraordinary story of how it was created...
I finished the guitar part and everybody stood up
and cheered and clapped. That was it.
Behind these songs is the untold story of music royalties and how
music industry deals have sometimes made songwriters multi-millionaires
whilst leaving others fighting for their share in court.
Always happens, every band, they look round and they notice
that one of them has got a bigger house than the other ones.
And they think, "Why them? A-ha, you wrote the songs."
Because that is where the money is.
# Cos it's a bittersweet symphony this life... #
We're at the beginning of a journey to find the world's richest songs,
the songs that have earned the most money in royalties.
Industry analysts have looked at the available data
and we have compiled a top ten countdown.
Some of these songs will be the ones you'll expect.
But there will be big surprises along the way, as well,
I can promise you that. So let's get cracking, shall we?
Here's number ten.
This song was written in California in the 1940s.
It's one of the oldest songs on the list.
I first heard it as a child and have heard it every year since.
I reckon most of us have.
But not so many people know the unlikely circumstances
in which this global hit was written.
On a blisteringly hot day in July 1945,
songwriter Mel Torme drove to Toluca Lake, near Los Angeles,
to the home of his writing partner, Bob Wells.
And found a surprise in the sitting room.
There on the piano stand on a spiral path is this chestnuts
roasting on a open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose,
Yuletide carols sung by a choir and folks dressed up like Eskimos.
And eventually, Bob appears from the background, you know,
and I held up the paper and said, "What is this?"
and Bob Wells said, "You know what, Mel? I just can't cool down today.
"And I just thought if I could write a few lines like this it
"would just somehow mentally cool me down."
And that's really all it was.
My dad was the one who said, "No, no, there's something here."
And literally 24 minutes later, The Christmas Song was written.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mel Torme.
# Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
# Jack Frost nipping at your nose... #
As well as writing songs, Mel Torme was a hugely successful singer.
He recorded four versions of The Christmas Song himself
between 1954 and 1992.
Torme revealed the secret of his success to Parky.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
You are incredibly musical, you conduct symphony orchestras, even,
- and yet you never had a music lesson in you life?
- No. Never did, no.
- It was just easy, was it?
- No, it wasn't easy, it was...learning to
arrange was done by some process of... I guess you could call it
musical osmosis. I grew a very large pair of ears, much larger than these,
and listened to and admired the people that absolutely
blew my mind away, musically.
One of these people lived not far from where Bob had written
the lyrics, and Mel the music, on that sweltering summer's day.
Literally that afternoon, my dad took the song and drove over the hill
to Hancock park, to the home of Nat King Cole,
and played Nat the song.
Played the song for Nat once and Nat said, "Play that again."
So he played it one more time and before he was done with the
final chord Nat was already saying, "That's my song, that's my song."
# Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow
# Will find it hard to sleep tonight
# They know that Santa's on his way... #
By the mid-'40s, Cole was a major star, performing pop-orientated
songs for mainstream audiences.
He recorded The Christmas Song in 1946.
Now, between 1945 and 1947, demobilised American servicemen
returned from the battlefields of World War II.
And this song became part of the soundtrack to
Christmas in peacetime.
A picture of what Christmas is supposed to look like.
Now, with my family, that's not what Christmas looked like, you know.
In my family, somebody is getting drunk
and, those days, sometimes it was me.
There was an uncle that didn't get on with a cousin
we had to sit them in separate places,
Am I doing enough for my kids?
Somebody tells me you're doing too much,
somebody else tells me I'm not doing enough.
And then you hear...
# Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. #
And you go, "Yeah, that's what this is supposed to feel like."
The song reached number three in the US charts, and the idealised
vision of Christmas it helped create has stayed with us ever since.
For a songwriter, a successful seasonal song is an annual gift.
Each year it gets more radio plays, is heard in shopping centres,
appears on Christmas compilations and sells more units.
# Yuletide carols being song by a choir... #
Cole recorded The Christmas Song twice more, in 1953 and 1961.
I think my dad had that sort of sixth sense that he could
have a hit with it but that if he gave it to Nat, it would be a smash.
And that's exactly what happened, you know,
and the rest is history, thank you very much.
and I was able to go to college, you know what I mean?
Mel Torme once said, "The royalty cheques were staggering,
"absolutely staggering.
"Each time one comes in, Bob Wells calls me and says,
"'My God! Have you looked at this one?'"
According to our calculations, The Christmas Song has earned just over
12.5 million in songwriting royalties.
Yeah, that's a lot of money, you know, you have to remember
that's over quite a lot of time and you have a lot of mouths to
feed so to speak, so I don't ever remember seeing it as one chunk.
HE LAUGHS
# Although it's been said Many times, many ways,
# Merry Christmas
# To you. #
So, how does a song earn royalties?
Well, a songwriter gets paid for every performance of a song,
for every copy sold, every time it appears on TV or radio.
In fact, by rights, if you hear a song,
someone, somewhere, should be earning royalty payments from it.
There is a set rate payable for that usage, and that is collected
on behalf of the writers, by a central collection society
and then it is distributed four times a year out to the writers.
One of them is timed to arrive just before Christmas, which is lovely,
so it gives everybody just a little bit extra cash just before Christmas
Of course, this isn't restricted to just one country.
Collection societies exist across the world,
taking care of royalties for songwriters who might not know
their music was even being used in that territory.
In the '90s, my band, The Shirehorses, was played on Japanese
radio, and then out of the blue I just received a cheque, for 15.32.
Might not sound a lot now, but...
Well, it wasn't a lot then, to be honest, but, every little helps, eh?
Reliable royalty figures in Britain are very hard to access.
But as a rough estimate, songwriting royalties
account for 7-8p for every track on a CD sold and half that
on an averagely priced iTunes download.
Radio play royalties vary widely,
but at the moment BBC Radio 1 pays around 16 a minute per song.
If you have a hit much bigger than mine was, it's all going to add up.
There are more profitable areas too,
where the fee rates are negotiable.
I would say a growth area has been use in synchronisation
with visual images. Sync rights, as we call them.
These would be the obvious ones of use in a feature film,
or a TV advert, and more recently on websites.
So we have, if you like, a new mini growth area.
They pay a license fee for the right to use that.
OK, here we go with song number nine, and a bloke who did as much
as anyone to integrate rock 'n' roll enter the mainstream in the '60s.
In 1964, he was the only American
to have two number ones in the UK charts.
And this is one of them.
In 1964, I was only six, a mere stripling,
and yet I can remember hearing this riff punching out of the radio.
An indelible riff, once hear never forgotten.
SONG: "Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison
# Pretty woman walking down the street
# Pretty woman The kind I like to meet
# Pretty woman... #
I don't know exactly where the genius in the song is.
Is it in the guitar lick?
Is it in the growl that Roy does?
Is it his unique way of saying mercy?
# Mercy! #
So here's the story. One afternoon at Roy Orbison's,
he's with his writing partner, Bill Dees, they're trying
to come up with stuff, not particularly getting anywhere.
At that point, Roy's wife, Claudette, comes in.
"Roy!" she says, "Want to go out shopping."
He says, "I suppose you want some money?"
And Bill Dees says, "Pretty woman don't need no money."
And they think, "Hmm."
Start riffing on it. Words come. The music comes.
A piece of history is born from that chance encounter.
A wonderful moment. The only downside is that Claudette went out
without any money and then later that day was done for shoplifting.
I made that up.
But Bill Dees did say that whenever he hears this riff,
he's reminded of a woman in high heels walking down the street.
# Pretty woman Don't walk on by... #
A pretty woman may not need no money,
but the song certainly made lots. As late as 1993, Bill Dees said
it made up most of his yearly income, over 100,000.
Acuff-Rose Music,
and the other half was divided between Dees and the Big O.
I have a swimming pool in the living room, my drawing room,
and six baths. And that's just for convenience,
if you're on a certain level. There are three levels.
And...
I have a couple of waterfalls beside the staircase
that go under the swimming pool. And this is for a pretty sound.
Rather than for show. Like I say, I don't have that many guests.
So, it's sort of...my cave, you know?
This is James Burton, the master of the telecaster.
James played Pretty Woman with the Big O at a concert in 1987.
Orbison died in 1988 but the performance won him
a posthumous Grammy.
That's the same thing with Pretty Woman. You get a great simple riff
- and you're half way there aren't you?
- Absolutely.
I mean, it is one of the great riffs, isn't it?
I think it is, and the song is fun to play, and it's a great song.
Good feel and everything.
And when we kicked it off, we just did...
PLAYS PRETTY WOMAN RIFF
Three, four.
So it works really good. It's really nice.
Yeah. I mean, it's one of those riffs that you just hear it
and you're in the zone straightaway, aren't you?
And the drum kicks it off, and you know, it's cool.
But, you know, when we did the Black And White Night
and we did Pretty Woman...
That was...you and Springsteen trading licks.
Yeah, man, it was great.
Roy's looking around and he's, like, admiring everybody
out there in the audience. He's diggin' it.
I asked Elvis, I said, "If you had to pick one of your favourite
"singers, who would it be?"
And he thought for a second and he said, "Roy."
# Whoa, whoa, pretty woman. #
Thank you.
But the Pretty Woman story has a tragic twist in the tale.
It happened in 1966, and concerns Orbison's wife, Claudette,
the muse behind his biggest hit.
That song, Pretty Woman, that was... Claudette, that was his first wife.
Yeah, you know, it's so sad that...
You know, cos Roy and his wife, they loved to ride motorcycles.
So they went out for a ride one day, a very nice day and so they
were sitting at this stop light, this intersection, stop light, and
so the light turned green and she takes off and Roy's still sitting
at the light and, unfortunately, a car ran the red light and hit her
and killed her on the motorcycle and that broke his heart.
It was a pretty sad thing, you know?
Roy Orbison, a majestic singer and a career that spanned the decades,
and yet it was on the slides,
Traveling Wilburys notwithstanding, towards the end of his career.
But Pretty Woman, the Roy Orbison song,
got a real kind of shot in the arm and went all around the world again
when it was used in the film...what was the name of that film?
It was Pretty Woman, wasn't it?
The song was used in the 1990 global hit movie
starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts.
but a song over a movie's end titles is said to bring in anything
between 50,000 and half a million pounds. Mercy!
The fact that someone thought enough of the song and felt it was
so important that they sort of married it together,
I think insures a little more life for that song.
In 1989, a Florida hip-hop posse used Pretty Woman
in a more controversial way.
Do you think you're nastier than the average rap band?
Well, we do sexual, we do explicit lyrics,
our lyrics are explicit, we talk about sex.
when they do derivative works which is to make it more street.
Pretty Woman was a nice, poppy, catchy, you know,
family-oriented, you know, song,
and they turned it into a song talking about women's bottoms.
For several reasons, we can't bring you
the 2-Live Crew version of this song.
But here's a taste of the inspired lyrics.
"Big, hairy woman, you gotta shave that stuff. Big, hairy woman,
"you know, I bet it's tough. Big hairy woman, all that hair,
"it ain't legit because you look like Cousin It."
Well, move over, Noel Coward.
Bill Dees despised this version.
Around this time, rap groups were plundering back catalogues
for samples from other songs.
They did it anyway. So lawyers got involved.
And 2-Live Crew's case went all the way to
the Supreme Court in Washington, DC.
They ended up winning the case because the Supreme Court
decided that 2-Live Crew's version of Pretty Woman, which they called
Oh, Pretty Woman, was a parody.
That means it was a version of the song that made fun of the
original version of the song and because we value the First Amendment
in the United States, we feel that when you make fun of something,
you shouldn't be restricted in your ability to do that,
You shouldn't have to pay for the right to do that.
A similar law has been considered over here in Britain.
It's not popular among songwriters, as you can imagine.
But despite the US Supreme Court ruling,
Pretty Woman has still made lots of money for Orbison and Dees.
If you're specifically talking about the writer's share,
I'm sure that it's millions of dollars.
But as to what amount, I'm not prepared to jump on.
But a lot of people have made a lot of money off a song
such as Pretty Woman.
Our research shows that over the years, Pretty Woman
has raked in nearly 13 million in royalties.
# Whoa, whoa, pretty woman. #
As far as we know,
this is the first time a survey like this has been attempted.
Notoriously difficult to pinpoint with precision
what certain songs have earned, not least because it's changing
all the time - records are being sold,
things are being played on the radio.
There are people in the industry who'd rather you didn't know what they've earned.
There may be songwriters who are not entirely sure themselves.
So, in many ways, it's one of the industry's best kept secrets,
but our analysts have compiled all the publicly available data
over the last 60 years, and so it might not be precise,
but it's as precise as anyone's going to get.
We are in the right ballpark, certainly.
The eighth song on our list is our first British entry.
It's also our youngest song, dating from 1983.
It was recorded by The Police, and is credited to one of our
most successful songwriters and artists, Sting.
And at an award ceremony in London in 2007,
it was marked for nine million radio plays.
Don't worry, we're only going to play it once.
MUSIC: "Every Breath You Take" by The Police
# Every breath you take
# Every move you make... #
Every Breath You Take stormed charts all over the world.
Number one in the USA, UK, South Africa, Ireland, Italy...
Everywhere, really.
That's many millions of records sold.
Certain songs come at a time in an artist's life
when the world is ready.
I mean, that song was seared into everybody.
I think Police was at a special spot in their career.
This, of course, was in a time of video, and the video,
the black and white of Sting doing that,
everything had a tremendous impact.
# Since you're gone I've been lost without a trace
# I dream at night I can only see... #
This was celebrated by the first MTV Awards in 1984.
MTV made music global, and boosted song sales massively.
# I keep crying, baby, baby
# Please... #
Every Breath You Take is damn near perfect. It is.
It's an absolute masterpiece.
And people talk about, you know, '80s studio sounds,
"Oh, the terrible tinny drums" and all that. No!
Go and listen to Every Breath You Take.
I think it's my most successful song
and probably better known than any others.
And yet, it's not in the least bit original.
It has a standard chord sequence...
# Every breath you take
# Every move you make. #
If that's your opening line and that's the title of the song,
you've locked in where you're going.
And Every Breath You Take, I mean that, really,
I want to know about what he's going to tell me now.
Sting's basic melody was developed into the famous
guitar riff by Andy Summers.
We went into the studio and Sting said to me,
"Go on, make it your own. Just... OK, the drums and bass are there,
"do whatever you want to it, I don't care anymore."
That's really throwing down the gauntlet.
But, you know, I was able to rise to the occasion,
and put in that lick, you know, that riff all the way through the song,
that just made it sound immediately like The Police.
I remember the moment clearly. I was out in the studio,
this large studio, completely alone.
I finished the guitar part and everybody stood up
and cheered and clapped. That was it.
# Every smile you fake, every claim You stake, I'll be watching you... #
Massively successful song and played at lots of weddings
and things and deemed to be a kind of big romantic classic.
Oh, every breath you take, I'll be watching you.
And in fact, it has more to do with divorce than weddings because Sting
wrote this around the time he was splitting up with his first wife.
And he has said this song is not about adoration,
it's about kind of watching, borderline stalking,
it's about control.
I always thought that rather than it being a, you know,
toasting someone with a glass of champagne, it was
glaring at them menacingly through the bottom of a drained pint glass.
And weirdly, maybe this is the song's appeal.
After all, in the '80s, the divorce rate in Britain
went through the roof.
Every Breath You Take caught the tone of the times.
It's a very modern love song.
It's estimated by his publisher that the
revenues from Every Breath You Take, were a quarter to a third
of the entire song publishing catalogue of The Police.
Just one song.
And that happens with so many people,
hugely popular artists, actually, if you drill down,
it's three or four songs, if you drill down a bit further,
it's one song.
But, you know, that's hell of a day's work, that is.
Recording Every Breath You Take,
a painful process.
In particular, relations between Sting
and drummer Stewart Copeland were reaching breaking point.
So do you think there's going to be Police around
- for quite a long time yet?
- We'll probably break up again next week.
In 2003, two decades after he wrote the song,
Sting was raking in 2,000 a day from Every Breath You Take,
a song, which like most of the big Police hits,
he took sole credit for.
By then, a big slice of these royalties weren't
coming from the original recording.
MUSIC: "I'll Be Missing You" by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans
P Diddy, or Puff Daddy as he was known then, sampled the song
on a 1997 tribute to his late friend Notorious B.I.G.
One thing I think that was very, very bright,
it certainly increased the value to the writer and the publisher,
when they came for the licence, and they said, "We're changing lyrics,
"we're doing this, we're doing that, we would like to have permission
"to do it and we would like certain portion of the writer's credit
"and the publishing because we're adding so much new work."
The publisher said,
"We'll let you do that, but you're not getting any credit.
"This song is still going to be 100% Gordon Sumner, Sting."
I'll Be Missing You takes its vocal melody
and some lyrics from Every Breath You Take.
And the distinctive sample?
Well, that was Andy Summers' guitar lick.
Sampling arrived in a big way with hip-hop.
Very often the bit that they're taking is the bit of sound,
the riff, the little hooky bit...not necessarily...they don't want
the sense of the song, they want the taste and the texture of the thing.
One of my little kids said, "Ooh, Dad there's a guy, on the radio
"who sounds like you." It was playing on his little radio
in the bedroom, and I went, "All right, let me hear...hang on."
# When it's real Feelings hard to conceal
# Can't imagine all the pain I feel
# Give anything to hear Half your breath... #
Puff Daddy's track was a global hit,
estimated to have sold around seven million copies.
At the time it didn't seem such a big deal, you know, of course,
he went and sold 50,000, then 100,000, then 200,000, 500,000, then
a million, and then 2 million, and it just went on and on and on.
And I certainly felt responsible for part of that
but I don't think I ever got due recognition for that.
The sampling of just one element of a song,
in this case, Summers' guitar riff,
raises interesting questions about ownership.
That becomes part of the record but not part of the copyright.
The song is the copyright.
It's hard to say how that should really be arranged
but I think we can leave that to the people in the studio
and the people in the band, so to speak.
Sting didn't write the guitar line, I wrote that.
But, you know, it gets complicated, you see.
This is the part where it gets involved with money, royalties,
intellectual property, who gets the credit for songwriting.
We had our own specific arrangement in The Police.
But, in this case, Sting came in with that song
so he's credited as the writer.
As the arranger, if you like, with me pulling the guitar part,
and I didn't get a credit.
So...
Anyway, we have internal arrangements, which we won't go into
right now, about the filthy lucre.
Overall, we estimate that this song has earned a breath-taking
13.5 million in filthy lucre.
Can I have mine now?
At least The Police reached some kind of arrangement.
Songwriting royalties can cause all kinds of tensions within bands.
Always happens, every band.
They become enormously successful, they go on the road for five years,
they go crazy, they take a few years off and then they look round
and notice that one of them's got a bigger house than the other ones.
And they think, "Why has that happened?
"A-ha! You wrote the songs."
Because that is where the money is.
You will probably find that behind most splits of bands
there is a songwriting issue somewhere.
It may not be the total reason for the split but it will be
there somewhere, it will be itching away at them at some level.
Sometimes these disagreements end up in a court of law.
# So true... #
Spandau Ballet and The Smiths went through complex
and expensive court cases over royalties.
# It's cold outside... #
This is precisely why some bands, among them, U2 and Coldplay,
are reported to have band agreements, which split the
songwriting royalties between all members,
regardless of their contribution to individual songs.
They might be at each other's throats sometimes,
that's rock and roll, isn't it?
But at least it's not about royalties.
Thank you, everybody.
Being smart, you probably guessed from where I am
that the next song on our list of the world's richest songs
is another Christmas number.
If you are budding songwriter, it might be worth
knuckling down to write one of these, because if you get it right,
it's like the gift that keeps on giving. This next one was
written by a New York songwriting duo of
Haven Gillespie and J Fred Coots, and as clearly, we're in New York,
let's have one of its celebrated versions by Bruce Springsteen,
who's over the river in New Joisey.
# You better watch out You better not cry
# You better not pout I'm telling you why
# Santa Claus is coming to town... #
The Boss's live concert version was released in 1981,
and still features on Christmas compilations today.
But the story of this song begins half a century earlier
on a New York train.
Haven Gillespie, a professional lyricist,
had been ordered by his publisher to write a Christmas song.
"What's the point?" he grumbled.
"Who's going to listen to it the other 11 months of the year?"
Gillespie sought inspiration from seasonal adverts
on a Manhattan subway train.
Then he remembered a warning from his mother,
"If you don't wash behind your ears, Haven, Santa won't come.
"You'd better be good."
He began to scribble lyrics on an envelope.
And during a short Manhattan subway ride he finished them.
As with, I think, a lot of songs that have endurance,
one of the elements they have is some kind of organic beginnings,
you know, from coming from a real life situation.
And when that happens, it's sort of otherworldly.
It's an amazing gift for a song writer.
And if a song, a new recording of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,
is recorded by someone like Bruce Springsteen,
you know that you're going to have a really good Christmas.
Back in the 1930s, audiences appreciated a rather
different sound. In November 1934, radio host Eddie Cantor had
a live banjo version of this song on his show. It was a huge success.
Back then, sales of sheet music were the main source
of royalties income. The day after Cantor's show,
Santa Claus had sold 100,000 copies.
By Christmas, sales passed 400,000,
making it number one in the sheet music hit parade.
You didn't have the option then of buying a record
so you buy the sheet music, and then once we did have records
that were at a price the general public could afford,
then sheet music becomes less.
And so it goes, really. Each time the technology moves on a little,
then you find what was the main source of revenue tends to die away.
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town has been recorded
over 200 different times.
Each one of those is a bit of a present for the writers,
cos for every cover version, all the songwriting royalties
go to the people who wrote the song.
So 200 versions, let's listen to all of them.
No, I'll tell you what, let's just listen to a few.
First off,the unmistakable voice of Dolly Parton.
# You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not... #
And the Jackson 5.
# Santa Claus is coming to town... #
Brace yourselves now. It's Justin Bieber.
# He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake... #
And finally, Alice Cooper with Santa Claws Is Coming To Town.
As in claws. Do you see what he did there? Brilliant.
# Santa Claws is coming to town... #
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, like many seasonal songs
from the mid-'20th century, avoids any religious references.
When these songs became popular hits, they helped create our
modern idea of a secular Christmas. Perhaps this isn't such a surprise.
Many of them were written by songwriters who,
for obvious reasons, left Christianity out of it.
Jews always excelled at writing American songs.
The real irony is that Christmas songs became
the special property of Jewish songwriters.
The Christmas Song, Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire,
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town,
Winter Wonderland - these are all written by Jewish songwriters.
So what do you know?
Well, what we know, with some degree of accuracy at least,
is that Santa Claus Is Coming To Town has,
in its various incarnations,
good, bad and indifferent, made just over 16.5 million.
So if we assume the publishing company have
taken 50% of the royalties,
then the other 50% has been split between Haven Gillespie
and J Fred Coots. Therefore, that inspired 1930s New York subway ride
has netted Haven and his heirs four million quid so far.
# He's coming to town... #
A 50/50 split is still common in the US,
but nowadays, a very successful British writer can get 75% or more.
And some songwriters, famous and not,
are controlling their own publishing to maximise their returns.
Before we move on to the sixth richest song in the world,
here's a cautionary tale for budding songwriters about a song
that just narrowly missed our chart.
When Van Morrison was a little boy he was a cheery soul.
He was good. He did go to sleep. He had marvellous Christmases.
And yet these days, he has something of a truculent
and grumpy reputation.
What could have happened to change cheery little Van
into the person we think we know today?
Perhaps this story of the relationship between
Van the songwriter and his record company holds the answer.
Maybe.
In 1967, 21-year-old Van the young man recorded in New York
with Bert Burns, pop impresario and owner of Bang Records.
One of the songs recorded was Brown Eyed Girl,
which would become Morrison's most successful ever song.
MUSIC: "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison
# Hey, where did we go
# Days when the rains came
# Down in the hollow... #
It has been played 10 million times on American radio.
I mean, even I was flabbergasted by that.
# You my, you my brown eyed girl... #
But this incredibly popular song is certainly not one of Van Morrison's
personal favourites. And with good reason.
One of Morrison's problems with Brown Eyed Girl is that he
has hardly ever received any royalties for it.
Partly because when he signed up with Burt Burns,
like any 21-year-old, you're keen to just get in there
and you'll sign whatever is put under your nose.
And his royalty rate was extremely low.
Well, it varied between extremely low to nonexistent on this material.
We reckon that Brown Eyed Girl has earned just over 12 million.
Thank you very much, thank you.
So there you go, bit of a cautionary tale. Of course, Van the man being
Van the man, he got his revenge in his customary way.
He wrote some deliberately bad songs for the Bang label,
and around that time he wrote a song called The Big Royalty Check,
the words to which go something like,
"I'm waiting for my royalty check to come in, it still hasn't come yet,
"It's about a year overdue, oh, oh, oh, oh."
I would say, if there is a moral, if there is a lesson in the story
of Brown Eyed Girl for the young songwriter, it's hold on to
the production, the publishing and the sound of it, if you can.
And make sure it's your song, make sure that it stays your song.
MUSIC: "Stand By Me" by Ben E King
Brilliant bass-line. Classic intro to a classic song.
Unmistakeable and one of the greats of American songwriting.
Co-written by Ben E King
and the legendary songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
Some of our tunes so far have had a sense of loss, of regret,
of guilt about them.
But this one, a resolutely upbeat message,
really lovely story behind it.
Ben E King wrote it for his childhood sweetheart, Betty.
I was sitting at home one day, I start strumming on my cheap guitar
and my wife, I was newly married,
and we were in a cheap one-room apartment and it came to life.
# When the night has come
# And the land is dark
# And the moon is the only light we'll see... #
Once completed, I knew that it was different to the other songs
that I had written. And that it did have something stronger
than what I thought it would end up being.
It just seemed to flow.
# Stand by me
# So darling, darling Stand by me... #
The year was 1960.
King travelled from his home in New York to the Brill Building,
a complex in Manhattan packed with writers churning out hit after hit.
One of the duos there were Jerry Leiber - who passed away in 2011-
and Mike Stoller.
Among their numbers were Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock for Elvis.
Major talents, then.
I kind of sussed out the chords of the piano while he was singing
and I came up with a bass pattern.
And Jerry yelled, "That's it, that's a hit."
# Dum dum dum, dum Dum dum dum, dum
# Dum dum dum, dum, da dum dum
# Da dum dum. #
Once you hear that line, and no other line is like that,
other than My Girl by The Temptations.
Close, but no cigar, the line of Stand By Me is right there.
# I won't cry
# I won't cry, no I won't shed a tear
# Just as long
# As you stand, stand by me... #
Of course, we added the guiro and the triangle so it was...
Bum, thwk, ding, thwk, ding.
And... But we picked up with the bass pattern later in the strings,
and then kept going higher and higher and higher.
STRINGS PLAY MELODY
You know, who doesn't love this song?
I mean, a classic is a word that's bandied around too easily
but this has everything.
It's beautifully sung, it's impassioned, it's passionate,
it has great melody.
And it appeared at just the right moment.
The late '50s and early '60s witnessed the birth
of the civil rights movement in the USA. An African-American
and two Jewish hep cats had composed a gospel-influenced anthem
to tolerance and togetherness, that would become timeless.
Stand By Me has a universal resonance.
Just in its message, you know,
we all want somebody or something to stand by us, to protect us,
to support us, to be there for us, and this is a classic instance
of a kind of gospel sentiment being transposed to a love lyric.
The song's theme of togetherness was reflected in how Ben E King
dealt with the royalties issue.
It was a very amicable split between himself,
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
Jerry said, "Well, you should be a part of this," and I agreed,
and so I have 25% interest as a writer, and Jerry 25,
because, in truth, Ben E did come
with the initial idea both musically and lyrically,
and it's worked well.
Most of us that create music, we don't think money first,
that's why most of us get hurt.
But we do feel that if it happens with a great song or
with some good people, we'll be financially fit. Yeah.
Stand By Me was a hit in 1961 on both sides of the Atlantic.
Then in 1986, it was used in the movie of the same name,
a coming-of-age flick starring a young River Phoenix.
And boom! It became a bigger hit 25 years later,
the exact same recording, nothing was changed.
So I guess it held up.
A year after the movie, in 1987, Stand By Me
was used as the soundtrack to a cult British TV ad for Levi's Jeans.
Fees to use a hit song in a commercial are negotiable
and can range from 50,000 to 750,000
So if a creative really wants to use your song,
don't sell yourself short.
Dependability, Stand By Me.
It's a great friend, it's someone you want to be with, it's..
They're the right values and that's very important
when a brand are doing advertising because they want you,
when you go away, to associate with that
so when you see their product, it makes you feel those things.
In 1987 Stand By Me went to number one here in the UK.
The '60s were cool again, and the combination of nostalgia
and new technology proved to be a money-spinner.
So those records, I wouldn't mind betting, sold a lot more on
being revived in the '80s, than they would have sold in the '60s, because
the record market in the '60s was quite small. You know, it was quite
a specialist thing, buying records - not everybody had a record player.
OK, fast forward to the '80s, everybody's got a CD player,
everybody's got a tape player, you know, and so the revenues
for a thing like that would be absolutely massive as a consequence.
It all helps. We reckon that Stand By Me
has brought in royalties worth just under 17.5 million.
That's nearly 28 million.
If it wasn't for Stand By Me, I'd probably be driving a cab.
If it wasn't for Stand By Me...
I wouldn't be as happy as I am
with my family and my grandkids and my kids.
Um, well, let's see, that means the publishers got 14...
If the writers were treated properly,
they would have divided up seven.
Um...that's a lot of money.
Where's it all gone?
And here's another happy aspect of the Stand By Me story.
Ben E King has put a lot of the money raised by this song
into the Stand By Me Foundation, which gives kids who might
not otherwise have got the chance to get scholarships to music college.
So that's a lot of money, a lot of kids, and a lot of scholarships.
OK, so now we get to number five.
This song was written in 1955 by Alex North and Hy Zaret.
Its most celebrated version is by the Righteous Brothers,
but it's a ballad which both seasoned professionals
and rank amateurs can't resist belting out again and again.
It'll be very familiar to you, feel free to sing along.
I know I will.
# Oh
# My love
# My darling
# I've hungered for your touch
# A long, lonely time... #
Bit of auto-tune wouldn't go amiss, there. Bit low.
North and Zaret wrote Unchained Melody for a 1955 movie
called, as you might be able to guess, Unchained.
A prisoner dreams of his girl who is far away
and hungers for her touch. Ah.
# I need your love... #
Unchained Melody comes out of a period of song-writing
in the '50s when you couldn't have a Hollywood movie
that didn't have a song in it, it was regarded... You couldn't do it.
They'd have this ridiculous war film or cowboy film and there'd always
be a set piece where somebody would sing a song, very often a ballad.
The bloke who wrote the music, Alex North, didn't think
much of it at the time and threw it in the office wastepaper basket.
He had to hurriedly retrieve it when he heard the cleaning lady
humming along to the tune they'd been working on.
Thought he might have been a bit hasty. Good job he did retrieve it -
massive, massive song.
# Time goes by... #
Put together with Zaret's dramatic lyrics, the song took off.
In 1955, four other versions of it reached the top ten
in the USA and the UK.
# Still mine... #
But the classic recording is the 1965 one by Bill Medley
and Bobby Hatfield, better known as the Righteous Brothers.
# Whoa, my love
# My darling... #
Some songs don't sound as if they were written,
they sound as if they were found, like the Dead Sea Scrolls
they were uncovered somewhere.
And Unchained Melody's got that feeling about it.
It sounds like, you know,
every ballad you've ever heard melded in to one.
No criticism at all.
# I need your love, I need your love Godspeed your love to me. #
You know, time goes by so slowly but time can do so much,
if you're still...
There's something about a song like Unchained Melody that is just this
extreme plaintive need for you to be in my life because without you
I'm nothing. As they say, really unhealthy thoughts, but beautiful.
And there's something about that specific melody that gives itself
to almost a biblical proportion of need.
# I need your love... #
As all of you who watch Mad Men will know,
the '50s in the USA were a period of prosperity but stifling conformity.
So maybe it's not surprising that all those pent-up feelings
found their expression in this uber-ballad.
Since 1955, there have been over 650 cover versions.
One of the four that's become a UK number one was by Gareth Gates,
which sold over 1.3 million copies.
# I need your love... #
It's one of those songs that any singer presented with the lead sheet
would think, "I can do that,
"I can belt may way through that no problem at all", you know.
It's got that kind of X Factor, kind of, "Me, me, me!
"Feel my pain!" thing about it.
So over the years, it's had all manner of rough treatment,
but, you know, it can take it.
# Lonely rivers flow to the sea To the sea... #
# To the open arms of the sea... #
Are you watching, Simon Cowell?
Pretty much note-perfect. Unchained Melody is a great karaoke favourite.
And artists are very keen for their songs to be included
in karaoke sets these days.
Adele at a recent awards ceremony dedicated her success to
everyone who sings karaoke.
Companies like this have to pay a license which covers all
the copyright on the songs they're using, and so when a song
like Unchained Melody is played and sung and murdered by people like me,
every time, then someone, somewhere is getting a royalty on it.
Which is nice.
Because karaoke has been hugely popular since the early '90s.
If you're very lucky and if you have a very successful song, they have
so many ways of making money and any one, karaoke may not be
a major player in buying a brand-new car, but it all goes together.
Our research shows that since Unchained Melody was let loose,
it has made just over 18 million.
Of course, not all songwriters make millions.
Most struggle to make a living wage. On top of that,
regular income streams like sheet music,
and record and CD sales, are in long-term decline.
And the internet is still in large parts unregulated,
with piracy and downloading rife.
It's happened so quickly, it's on such a grand scale, that it's enough
to almost take your breath away and your livelihood at the same time.
Bill Withers sat with a congressman and he said,
"You know, congressman. I want you to appreciate something.
"We need to be able to make a living with our songwriting,
"and if we can't make a living writing songs,
"then we're going to have to do something else for a living,
"and, congressman, you do not want Ozzy Osbourne as your plumber."
But it's not all doom and gloom out there.
The 21st century is throwing up new challenges,
but it's creating possibilities and openings for songwriters, as well.
I'm very bullish on the future of the music industry in general.
Song writers, artists, record companies, everybody in the future
is going to be probably making a lot more money
than they made in the past.
There's film, television licensing, mobile apps, streaming music,
streaming services,
greeting cards and all kinds of music-producing devices.
Even as you're listening to this broadcast,
over 250,000 music producing devices are being manufactured.
MUSIC: "Mosh" by Eminem
Not so long ago, Eminem joined Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber
in racking up over a billion views on his YouTube Channel.
And a video he made with Rihanna, for Love The Way You Lie,
set a record for the most hits in one day.
Rolling Stone Magazine estimates that a writer earns around
Eminem's songs have had a billion. You do the maths.
Our next song is a classic of British songwriting
from the greatest band of all time.
It was written by Paul McCartney, who you've probably heard of.
You may also be vaguely aware of the band he was in, The Beatles.
And this was recorded in 1965.
Our number four richest song is Yesterday.
# Yesterday
# All my troubles seemed so far away
# Now it looks as though they're here to stay
# Oh, I believe in yesterday... #
Have you really thought where the song came from?
Have you been able to work it out?
I don't know, you know, as you say, I dreamed it,
and woke up one morning with the tune in my head.
Didn't believe it was mine, really. I just thought...well, it can't be
cos I've got the whole tune, you know, it never happens like that.
It is strange that it's sort of the most successful, that I didn't
even write it really, in a way, but my subconscious wrote it.
McCartney has said this melody came to him
on a tour of France with The Beatles in 1964.
So he could remember it, before he came up with the words
to Yesterday, Paul McCartney remembered this by singing,
"Scrambled eggs, oh, my baby, how I love your legs."
The baby being Jane Asher with whom he was living at the time.
Not bad for a song that had its beginnings humbly in scrambled eggs.
# Scrambled eggs
# Oh, my baby, how I love your legs
# Not as much as I love scrambled eggs
# Oh, we should eat some scrambled eggs... #
From what I gather, that song was knocking around for ages.
They were doing different things, they were working
on a film and they had a piano to the side and McCartney
kept going across and tinkling away and that song came up again and it
became the joke of the band, here goes scrambled eggs again.
The eggy lyrics were finally replaced in May 1965.
With some pretty downbeat, if not depressing, new words.
Looking back on it now, people have suggested that it might have been
to do with the death of my mum.
Cos it has got, "Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say,
"I believe in yesterday" and stuff.
So it may have been subconsciously something to do with that.
I'm trying to remember it, now.
# Yesterday
# All my troubles seemed so far away
# Now it looks as though they're here to stay
# Oh, I believe in yesterday... #
It's hard to believe now, but in 1965 many found the Fab Four's music
dangerously modern. McCartney's aching ballad was more acceptable.
You could say it was a Beatles song for people
who didn't like The Beatles.
# Yesterday... #
Yesterday went on to be a chart hit across the globe,
the US, Australia, Germany, Norway, on and on and on.
But a huge hit can be a curse as well as a blessing.
Especially when it's written by one band member.
Yesterday was the first Beatles song McCartney wrote alone,
and John, George and Ringo didn't perform on it.
You could say that Yesterday was the song that,
in the end, broke up The Beatles.
There was always immense creative tension between Paul McCartney
and John Lennon.
And so Paul McCartney is throwing off these tunes, you know,
and John Lennon might not admit it but he must have resented it.
There must have been part of him that thought "I could do that."
And after The Beatles split up, Lennon did.
One of the songs included a bitter reference to Yesterday.
Later on in that horrible song How Do You Sleep?
that he wrote about Paul McCartney, he'd say, one of the lines is...
# The only thing you done was Yesterday... #
That rankled with him for a long, long time.
Yesterday was credited to Lennon/ McCartney, as most of The Beatles'
songs were, which might seem odd, as McCartney wrote it alone.
But then Lennon shared his royalties
on Beatles' songs he wrote solo, too.
When Yesterday appeared on the 1995 anthology, McCartney unsuccessfully
attempted to have the credit changed to McCartney/Lennon.
What you have to realise with The Beatles, is that the
afterlife of the Beatles was longer, more complex, more tortured,
more painful than the quite brief period that they were together.
A lot of those arguments were people and their lawyers,
their representatives sitting around boardroom tables in London and New York or whatever,
trying to divvy up this massively lucrative legacy that these guys had
knocked out when they were 23, 24, years old, at a time when there
was no precedent, nobody had been there, you know.
They were out there with no compass at all.
And there was plenty of money to argue about.
Yesterday is reported to be the most popular British song in the US.
And it's also the most covered pop song in history.
The Guinness Book of World Records estimates
there are at least 3,000 existing versions.
In fact, so many people have done it, it's easier to list some of the people that haven't done it.
They include Kraftwerk, The MC5 and Throbbing Gristle.
Some of the celebrated cover versions of this include
Tom Jones, Tammy Wynette, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes,
Elvis Presley, Andy Williams. I mean, the list just goes on and on.
They know it's going to be enjoyed by the public in a sense
if they enjoy their artistry at all, because it's so recognisable.
It's a great way to fill albums with things you know the people
are ready to accept, and, as I said, it helps the copyright immensely.
HE HUMS YESTERDAY
The troubles do indeed seem so far away
when we tot up the song's earnings.
We estimate it's made 19.5 million English pounds.
- There might be all these versions, but that's THE version.
- Oh...
CROWD CHEER AND APPLAUD
So let's have a look at our top ten, what do we notice?
Two distinct groups of songs,
that's what I noticed when I first saw this list.
You've got the Christmas songs - understandable,
we all love Christmas.
But the other group of songs are on altogether darker themes -
obsession, regret, paranoia, affairs, loneliness, longing.
Even Stand By Me, which is our happiest song,
has an element of "you and me against the world" to it.
So why might this be?
Why are these songs of sadness the songs that we cherish?
They're disproportionately favoured among women.
And women create the huge hits.
Boys create the cult hits.
If you want to sell records in huge quantities, you sell them
to women, right across the population, as currently being
borne out once again by the enormous success of Adele.
# Throw your soul through every open door... #
There's something almost empathic as well as cathartic about it.
We feel like the singer and everybody involved with
the record is expressing what we're feeling.
And therefore making it bearable and almost sort of noble,
and almost noble.
We want to feel that our heartbreak isn't just completely insignificant.
Which it usually is.
And so we come to the top three of the world's richest songs.
And the next one is a real classic of song-writer's art,
composed by an American husband-and-wife team.
And there's a really interesting tale behind this one.
Two different versions by two different artists,
vying for the top of the UK charts.
This then, is our number three.
# But, baby, baby, I know it
# You've lost that lovin' feeling
# Whoa, that lovin' feeling
# You've lost that lovin' feelin' Now it's gone, gone, gone... #
We've had a fair few ballads in our countdown so far.
But this is the big one, the Mount Everest of heartbreak songs.
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' was probably one of the greatest
combinations of song, production and artist, that I think we'd ever had.
I think so too.
And it was everything coming together that made
the song as successful as it was.
Mann and Weil worked in New York's Brill Building,
along with Leiber and Stoller who
wrote our number six richest song, Stand By Me.
But to write this song, Mann and Weil were flown out to LA
by legendary producer, Phil Spector.
We were in California, and staying at the Chateau Marmont,
rented a piano, we had our dog with us.
We wrote most of the song and then we got stuck on the bridge
and we called Phil and, Phil said,
"Come on over. We'll finish it together."
And he came up with that bridge part.
The idea of doing the Hang On Sloopy bit. # Bum, dum, dum, dum. #
That was his concept.
# Baby, baby, I get down on My knees for you... #
- And to do that call and response thing...
- Right, right.
- ..was very fresh for a pop song.
- Yeah.
- # Baby
- Baby
- # Baby
- Baby... #
Spector got a third of the songwriting royalties
for Lovin' Feelin', but his contributions weren't always
welcome at the time.
I didn't know how to end the chorus,
and this is going to sound funny. And he said...
"Gone, gone, gone, woah, woah, woah,"
which was his... He contributed that to the chorus,
and it sounds ridiculous, but the truth is, it worked.
And she felt, after that, any song that has whoa, whoa, whoa, in it...
THEY LAUGH
# Whoa, whoa... #
Phil said, "This is going to be a very big song for all of us."
I said, "Phil, any song with whoa, whoa, whoa, in it, can't be big,
"or important."
You know, I was kind of a Broadway star,
and, I just thought, once he threw in whoa, whoa, whoa, and Barry liked it,
and nobody would listen to me, that, you know, it could have...
That's why we never listened to anything more.
That's right, it was the end of my credibility.
# There's no welcome look... #
Spector was right.
The record hit number one in the US charts.
This song, like Yesterday, also has a strong connection to Liverpool.
Because in the UK, someone else had already recorded it.
Singers were often given, you know, big hits, records that had been big
hits in America, and they recorded those and sometimes did quite
a good job with them and sometimes didn't do quite such a good job.
# You're trying hard not to show it... #
Cilla Black sang a home-grown version of Mann and Weil's song.
# Baby, I know it
# You've lost that lovin' feelin'... #
They just don't have the sort of cavernous majesty that
Spector's Wall of Sound productions do.
# Whoa, that lovin' feelin'
# You've lost that lovin' feelin' Now it's gone, gone, gone... #
Maybe not. But in the mid-'60s,
Cilla Black was a big star in Britain. The chart for 24th January
The only way to fight back was to
bring the Righteous Brothers to Britain.
From memory, I got on the phone and said,
"Phil, if you want your record to happen you've got to send them over."
# Baby, baby
# I'll get down on my knees for you... #
In the '60s, radio play was the key to chart success.
And Cilla's manager, Brian Epstein,
appeared to have the broadcasters on his side.
It wasn't so easy on the BBC with the Righteous Brothers
because one of the DJs on the Light Programme in those days
was a former comedian.
I called him up and asked him if he'd play the record and he
was quite adamant that he wouldn't even play this record in his toilet.
Cilla was number three in the charts.
Brian Epstein bumped into Tony Hall at a party.
"You don't stand a hope in hell," said Epstein.
"Don't be so sure," said Tony Hall.
Andrew Loog Oldham, The Stones' manager,
then took out a full-page advert in the Melody Maker.
"This", it said, "is Spector's greatest production,"
"the last word in tomorrow's sound today,
"exposing the overall mediocrity of the music industry."
In America, you don't read the trade papers,
as a buyer or as the record public.
They don't read the trade. Here, they do.
Here you have a limited number of stations.
Of course, you can reach a very vast audience quickly.
England was very kind to me, really, they were.
You know, it's a big part of, kind of, how Phil Spector became
hip was that he was really embraced here by the cool bands
and the cool sort of string-pullers and behind-the-scenes managers.
The week after we went to number one and, again from memory, I think Cilla
just did a dive and disappeared without a trace, bless her heart.
# Bring back that lovin' feelin'
# Whoa, that lovin' feelin'... #
For Mann and Weil, of course, the Cilla chart battle simply meant
they were on double royalties.
And You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' went on to become the most performed
song of the 20th century.
Overall, we reckon that this song has made nearly 20.5m in royalties.
- Look at this house!
- You could call this house the house
that Lovin' Feelin' built. Cos I think there's been 250 versions.
The house that bum-ba-bum-ba-bum built.
And whoa, whoa, whoa.
- And whoa, whoa, whoa.
- We should get a doorbell that goes...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah.
# Bring back that lovin' feelin'... #
This little studio is a piece of rock and roll history.
Some extraordinary records have been made in this room.
Buggles, Video Killed The Radio Star, recorded here.
The Clash, London Calling, recorded here.
Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody, recorded here.
Now, there may be lots of you expecting Queen
and Bohemian Rhapsody to make the top ten.
Indeed, there might be a lot of you who thought it would be
number one. So what are the amazing songs that failed to make our list?
# Goodbye, Norma Jean... #
What about Elton John's Candle In The Wind,
which shifted an amazing 33 million units?
If you remember at the time, it was
so many millions of copies of that single were just rushing out
of the stores, they couldn't print them fast enough.
I was slightly surprised not to see that in the list.
But, I guess the reason for that is because a song to get into
your top ten would have had to have had not just record sales,
but have been used in all sorts of other ways, as well.
And perhaps that is one of those songs that is so closely
associated with one event that it hasn't been used to that extent.
I mean, the obvious absence would be any Beatles records
other than Yesterday.
That would, I think, surprise most people.
# There's a fire starting in my heart... #
I guess, I mean, Adele would be the other one, of course.
But that is so new that only time will tell.
I expect those songs to have longevity.
By February 2012, Rolling In The Deep
had sold over 7 million copies in the USA alone.
The highest-ever selling digital single by a female artist.
Our countdown has revealed the magic ingredients
that make a song truly rich.
Huge sales and downloads, numerous cover versions,
constant radio airplay in countless countries.
# The scars of your love remind me... #
And to introduce it to a whole new audience,
an appearance in major movie or a TV ad campaign helps things along.
Adele's Rolling In The Deep has already had several cover versions.
And who knows?
If we continue to pay for the music we consume,
in ten or 20 years' time,
that song, too, may become one of the world's richest.
# Played it, you played it You played it to the beat. #
And so we come to our number two richest song.
And it is one of the classics of popular music.
No question about that.
It was written in 1940 by one of the 20th century's greatest
and most prolific songwriters.
Any idea what it is yet?
Well, this lavish special effect sequence might give you a clue.
# I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
# Just like the ones I used to know... #
Irving Berlin is one of a handful of great 20th-century songwriters
who wrote his own words and music.
Somebody was asked, "Where's Irving Berlin's place in American music?"
And the answer was, "He IS American music."
And White Christmas is the daddy, the big boss, of festive tunes.
For decades it was the top-selling record of all time,
Bing Crosby's version of it was the
top-selling single recorded song of all time.
A Merry Christmas, everybody. And good night.
When you think of accumulative sales of sheet music,
all its various, you know, untold hundreds and thousands of recordings
in God knows how many languages, you know, it was a monster.
Bing Crosby's version of that song has sold 50 million copies.
It was number one in the USA in 1942.
And '45. And '46.
#..Listen, and children... #
But eventually, he had to re-record it
because the master tape had been used so many times it
eventually fell apart. And so many people have recorded this immortal
song, that its total sales have now
amassed a staggering 100 million units.
I know that, was it last Christmas that Lady Gaga recorded it?
# I'm dreaming of a white snowman... #
I thought it was great.
# With a carrot nose and charcoal eyes... #
There are new recordings of White Christmas and it stays fresh
and I suppose so long as it does, it's going to be played.
# Oh! Quand j'entends chanter Noel... #
White Christmas has been translated into numerous languages
including Hungarian and Japanese.
Incredibly, there's a version in Swahili.
And in a nod to the writer's Jewish roots, there's one in Yiddish.
Irving Berlin's irresistible rise
isn't just most song-writers' fantasy.
It's the American Dream writ large.
# There may be trouble ahead... #
He was that penniless, poor immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island
from a Shtetl, in far-off Russia, and was a great, possibly apocryphal
story that when he was a newspaper boy some bullies,
some thugs threw him in to the East River where he nearly drowned and
somebody had to jump in to save him and clutched in his hands were the
three pennies that he had earned that day.
So he really was that rags to riches.
He definitely lived the rags part and then, of course,
he became a great songwriter and lived the riches.
During his career, Irving Berlin wrote over 1,000 songs.
As well as White Christmas, he wrote such greats as Top Hat,
Putting On The Ritz, and There's No Business Like Show Business.
And when the money began to roll in through his gift and his graft,
he was as keen to hang on to it as he had been when he was a kid.
He helped form ASCAP, the American royalties collection agency,
which laid the foundations of the royalties system we know today.
Berlin was a very smart business man
and very smart about protecting the writers' rights.
And also, of course, collecting royalty, collecting revenue.
He held on to his copyrights with an iron fist,
he wanted squeeze every last dime out of them.
Because Berlin had his own publishing company,
he had much more control over what his work earned.
But he was also very generous with some of the royalties.
During World War II he also wrote God Bless America.
All the royalties go to the Girl Scouts of America -
around 6 million so far.
But that's dwarfed by the money brought in by White Christmas.
Our research reveals that Berlin's masterpiece has earned
a staggering 24 million.
I think he would be very happy but I don't know whether
he would be very happy about losing out to number one place.
Like our number ten, The Christmas Song,
a huge part of White Christmas' success can be traced to
the USA's involvement in World War II.
I ask that the congress declare
a state of war between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
# I'm dreaming of a white Christmas... #
With American fighting forces overseas,
those American military thousands of miles from home, heard that song
with the context of wishing they were home with their own families.
And from the beginning, in a way that no-one possibly could have
anticipated, but which in hindsight was completely expected,
White Christmas became a nurturing anthem for soldiers
throughout the Allied Forces all over the world.
White Christmas became the most
requested song on Armed Forces Radio, listened to over and over
by homesick soldiers.
It's not just a "isn't Christmas so nice and wonderful?" song.
Nor is it a piece of wartime propaganda like the deservedly
forgotten You're A Sap, Mr Jap.
There's a longing to Berlin's song which comes from his own
mixed feelings about the time of year.
I think that Irvin Berlin brought to the creation of that song
his own emotion, which was bitter sweet,
life is joy and sadness mixed together,
and there is a yearning in White Christmas,
there is a combination of melancholy and sweet.
The melancholy part comes from a tragic event in the Berlin family
that took place on Christmas Day, 1928, over a decade
before the song was written.
My parents had a little boy and he would have been
maybe two years older than me and he died on Christmas Day.
He was four weeks old and he died from what is known as cot death.
And my parents never spoke about him, they could not speak about him
and I think that, for them, perhaps particularly my mother, it was very
difficult to celebrate Christmas, though they never showed it,
but it was a real trauma for them
and so they never really got over it.
# And may all your
# Christmases be white... #
Our nine songs so far have taken us
on a bit of a rollercoaster ride.
Amazing writing of music and lyrics, brilliant songs, financial reward
beyond anybody's dreams and a hefty dose of tragedy along the way.
So what possibly could the number one song, the song that has
earned more money globally than any other possibly have to top that?
- Happy birthday, Andrew!
- Thanks, guys.
Yes, our number one song has made significantly more money than
any other on the list and around it is the saga of legal battles,
money, more money and the rights being assigned despite no-one
being quite sure what the origin of the song is.
Brace yourselves, our number one is Happy Birthday.
# Happy birthday to ya... #
No, not that one.
# Happy birthday, happy birthday... #
Or that one, but it's a song no-one has any difficulty remembering.
# Happy birthday to you
# Happy birthday to you
# Happy birthday, dear Andrew
# Happy birthday to you. #
Nice to see people enjoying themselves, isn't it?
So here's the story behind the song.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
Back in the 1890s, in Louisville, Kentucky,
there were two teachers - sisters called Patty and Mildred Hill.
Two sweet little old ladies created a song to sing
to their kindergarten class.
# Good morning to you Good morning to you... #
And the children used to sing it at assembly every morning.
# Good morning, good morning Good morning to you. #
And then somewhere along the line it morphed into Happy Birthday to you.
# Happy birthday to you... #
No-one knows when it happened or who came up with the words
but this little ditty caught on fast.
# Happy birthday, your Royal Highness
# Happy birthday to you. #
Was I surprised it was at the top of the list?
I suppose so because it's...you think of it as a novelty song,
it's not really a real song, is it?
It's this little hook, little ditty, that everybody knows
but, actually, it's such an ingrained part
of our popular culture,
not just popular, but from before, and it will always be there.
Personally, I wish I'd written that and copyrighted it.
It started appearing in film and TV things in the 1930s
where it was uncredited.
One of those was an Irving Berlin production called As Thousands Cheer.
And the third Hill sister, Jessica, heard that and thought,
"Hang on a minute, that sounds a bit like our tune"
and it went to court and it was decided in their favour.
Happy Birthday To You did sound like the Hills sisters' tune
and they were assigned the copyright.
And since then, every time it's been used, then copyright has to be paid.
So not just film and TV, but Casio pays every time it plays on
one of their digital watches.
Cards, candles, and perhaps, most importantly, musical underwear.
UNDERWEAR PLAYS HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Well, if I was the owner of the copyright of Happy Birthday,
you know, my teams of lawyers would be energetically working very,
very hard to make sure that it didn't slip
out of copyright for whatever reason, they'd probably be
looking at ways to slightly adapt the lyrics, y'know.
The publishing rights to Happy Birthday were bought
in 1988 by one of the world's largest music publishers,
Warner/Chappell, for a reported price of 25 million. Lawyers have
reported annual six figure royalty cheques, split between Warner Group
and the Hill Foundation, set up to look after the sisters' family.
If you hear Happy Birthday being sung in a movie or television show,
the fee for that is about 25,000.
All the authors of Happy Birthday are dead
and have been dead for many years so why isn't that song public domain?
It's because our copyright act was extended back in the '90s
and Warner/Chappell bought the publishing catalogue which
artificially, or in fact, extended the copyright up until 2030.
So we'll be paying for Happy Birthday for the next 25 years.
Here in the European Union,
it's reported to be under copyright until the end of 2016.
So if you'll excuse the visual pun, that means Happy Birthday
keeps bringing in royalties. Lots and lots and lots of them.
Well, that makes sense. You know, you own it,
you're letting somebody use it, well, the people that publish
Happy Birthday own it, they purchased it,
you know, there's income for the publishers there's income for
those little ladies or their heirs.
These big entertainment companies,
and all these things are owned by, lets not forget,
BIG entertainment companies,
which are in turn owned by BIG financial institutions.
And, you know, this is...their bottom line is really affected by
whether they can keep these things in copyright or not.
So just how much has this little song written by
two schoolteacher sisters actually made?
Overall, we estimate that the song has earned
an extraordinary 30 million.
# Happy birthday to you
# Happy birthday to you... #
A very, very happy birthday indeed.
# Happy birthday, dear viewer
# Happy birthday to you. #
And if it's your birthday today,
we were singing that song especially for you.
If it isn't, the next birthday you have
someone's bound to sing it to you because Happy Birthday
is the most frequently sung song in the world, and it's a record breaker!
So what does a writer need to create one of the world's richest songs?
Well, inspiration certainly, a good deal of hard work,
and a big slice of luck.
But success for songs has
come different ways across differing eras.
Throughout the 20th century the mediums have shifted
from sheet music to radio, to taking record sales
and CD sales and synchronized media.
And now with the internet, the music industry is changing faster than
ever, opening up new frontiers for songwriters, for better or worse.
But some things seem certain - there will always be great songs,
there will always be talented people to write them.
Those great songs will be enjoyed by people for many, many years to come.
And will earn someone an awful lot of money for many years to come.
So, perhaps, the most important lesson from all of this is
get yourself a good lawyer, strike yourself a very good deal.