1961 single by Neil Sedaka
| "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" |
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 Italian release of "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" |
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| B-side | "Don't Lead Me On" |
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| Released | November 1961 |
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| Recorded | 1961 |
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| Genre | Pop |
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| Length | 2:40 |
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| Label | RCA Victor |
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| Songwriter(s) | Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield |
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"Sweet Little You"
(1961)
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"Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen"
(1961)
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"King of Clowns"
(1962)
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"Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" is a pop song released in 1961 by Neil Sedaka, who wrote the music and performed the song, with lyrics written by Howard Greenfield. The song is noted for being similar in musical structure to Take Good Care of My Baby by Bobby Vee (another 1961 hit), and additionally for its resemblance to the melody of the Chiffons' subsequent 1963 hit "One Fine Day". Both of these songs exhibiting similarity to "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" were penned by the team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin (King and Sedaka were close friends in high school, and Sedaka was known for his appropriation of other popular song motifs in his work). The song reached #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart[1] and No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart.
Background
The narrator sings the song to a younger acquaintance who had up to that point had more of a sibling-like relationship (“when you were only six, I was your big brother”) upon her sixteenth birthday, reminiscing about the ups and downs of their friendship thus far and declaring that now that she has grown from an awkward tomboy (comparing her younger self to the subject of the Rodgers and Hart song "My Funny Valentine"). Greenfield wrote the song out of a flippant comment Sedaka had made regarding their success up to that time: "you could write a birthday song and it'd be a hit."[2]
This was one of several Sedaka recordings that employed the services of drummer Gary Chester.[3] Other musicians on the record include Al Casamenti, Art Reyerson and Charles Macey on guitar, Ernie Hayes on piano, George Duviver on bass, Artie Kaplan on sax, Seymour Barab and Morris Stonzek on cellos, David Guillet, Joseph Haber, Louie Haber, Harold Kohon, David Sackson, Maurice Stine, Louis Stone, and Arnold Goldberg on violins, and Phil Kraus and George Devens on percussion.
A year after the song became a hit, Sedaka's brother-in-law, chemist Ed Grossman, wrote lyrics for a sequel song from the sixteen-year-old's perspective. In "It Hurts to Be Sixteen," the female singer laments her "in-between" state between childhood and adulthood, insisting she has fallen in love but that those around her insist she is too young. "It Hurts to Be Sixteen," with a melody written by Sedaka, was a minor hit for Andrea Carroll (herself 16 at the time she recorded it) in 1963.
