I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am
"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.
| "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am" | |
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| Song by Harry Champion | |
| Written | 1910 |
| Genre | Music Hall |
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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 | |||
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| Length | 1:50 | |||
| Label | EMI | |||
| Songwriter(s) |
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| Producer(s) | Mickie Most | |||
| Herman's Hermits singles chronology | ||||
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Joe Brown included the song on his first album A Picture of You in 1962. But in 1965, it became the fastest-selling song in history to that point when it was revived by Herman's Hermits, becoming the group's second number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, dethroning "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". 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".