"I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am" | |
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Song by Harry Champion | |
Written | 1910 |
Genre | Music Hall |
Songwriter(s) |
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"I'm Henry VIII, I Am" | ||||
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Single by Herman's Hermits | ||||
from the album Herman's Hermits and Their Second Album! Herman's Hermits on Tour | ||||
B-side | "The End of the World" | |||
Released |
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Recorded | De Lane Lea Studios, London, 1 February 1965 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 1:50 | |||
Label | EMI | |||
Songwriter(s) |
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Producer(s) | Mickie Most | |||
Herman's Hermits singles chronology | ||||
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"I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am" (also "I'm Henery the VIII, I Am" or "I'm Henry VIII, I Am"; spelled "Henery" but pronounced "'Enery" in the Cockney style normally used to sing it) is a 1910 British music hall song by Fred Murray and R. P. Weston. It was a signature song of the music hall star Harry Champion.
Joe Brown included the song on his first album A Picture of You in 1962. In 1965, it became the fastest-selling song in history to that point when it was revived by Herman's Hermits,[2] becoming the group's second number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, dethroning "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones. Despite that success, the single was not released in the UK. The Herman's Hermits version is a very short song, one of the shortest ever to be a number-one single in the US.
In the well-known chorus, Henery explains that his wife had been married seven times before, each time to another Henery:
I'm 'Enery the Eighth, I am,
'Enery the Eighth I am, I am!
I got married to the widow next door,
She's been married seven times before
And every one was an 'Enery
She wouldn't have a Willie nor a Sam
I'm her eighth old man named 'Enery
'Enery the Eighth, I am!
However, in the Hermits' version, Peter Noone ends each chorus with "I'm her eighth old man, I'm 'Enery" and never sings "named".