Happy Together (song)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Happy Together" is a 1967 song from The Turtles' album of the same name. Released in spring of 1967, the song knocked the Beatles' "Penny Lane" out of the #1 slot for three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the group's only chart-topper.
Pop culture references
The song has been featured in many movies, including 1970's The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, 1983's Heart Like A Wheel, 1987's Making Mr. Right, 1987's Ernest Goes to Camp, 1990's The Naked Gun, 1994's Muriel's Wedding, 1997's Happy Together, 2000's Sorted, 2001's Shrek, 2002's Adaptation., 2002's [Cherish]], 2002's S1m0ne, 2003's Freaky Friday featuring a slightly different version of the song, performed by Simple Plan, 2004's Ma Mère, 2005's Imagine Me and You, 2006's documentary Blindsight and 2007's The Simpsons Movie, 2008's 27 Dresses.
In television, the song has been used in many episodes of The Simpsons including "The Way We Weren't" "Trilogy of Error", and even The Simpsons Movie ; and in episodes of That '70s Show (sung by the cast in the episode "That '70s Musical"), Cupid (sung by Lisa Loeb), Scrubs, ER, The Wonder Years, and My Name Is Earl ("Faked His Own Death").
It has also been used in television commercials for Coldwell Banker, Golden Grahams, Florida Orange Juice(both Turtles' and Simple Plan's versions), The NFL, Burger King, Heineken (starring Jennifer Aniston which only aired in Europe), the commercial for the video game Super Smash Bros., npower, Saturn Corporation, Toyota, Twix, "Extra" bubble gum, Mervyn's (as sung by The Youngs). Smith's Potato Chips, with the lyrics being changed to "I can't see me lovin' nobody but Smiths" and Applebees with lyrics being, "Imagine Steak and Shrimp...", but Applebees was sued by the Turtles for using the tune but not the lyrics to this song, which was not part of the contract. In 2008, the song is featured in the commercial for LG's Decoy cellular phone and in a Brazilian commercial for Ford Focus.
Covers
"Happy Together" has been covered by artists as diverse as Weezer, Captain and Tennille, Jason Donovan, The Nylons, Simple Plan, Donny Osmond and the Flobots. In 1999, BMI named "Happy Together", with approximately 5 million performances on American radio, the forty-fourth most-performed song in the USA 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 Fillmore East - June 1971 is especially notable: his band at the time included Turtles vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman and bassist Jim Pons. Kaylan and Volman also did a reggae remake of the song for the last Flo & Eddie album: Rock Steady With Flo & Eddie. More recently, the song has been covered by B.E. Taylor for his latest album, Love Never Fails, and by the Flobots. The song appeared on The Simpsons, in the episode The Way We Weren't. The song has also been sung by the Red Army Choir and the Leningrad Cowboys, as well as the English rock band Johnny Panic. It was also performed on the show American Idol on February 19, 2008, by David Cook, and on February 20, 2008, by Brooke White.
In 2007 the song was used as a sample on the song "Ooh Ooh Baby" from Britney Spears' album Blackout.
