Nobody Knows Who Wrote 'Baby Shark' and the Song Feels Like It Never Ends

Kids Music Day is on October 2, and I was looking for songs to cover for that when I remembered the sensation that was Pinkfong‘s “Baby Shark.” It’s catchy, it’s played relentlessly, and if I’m being honest, it haunts my dreams sometimes. There was a time when it was difficult to make it through the day without hearing the song or a reference to it. It became a meme.

Kids Music Day is the work of Keep Music Alive, a nonprofit that holds the event on the first Friday of October each year. Music schools and retailers around the world take part with events such as free introductory lessons and “instrument petting zoos” (fantastic name). Few songs have put more small hands on piano keys in the past decade than this one.

Baby Shark’s Summer Camp Origins

For a song so popular, it’s odd that nobody knows who wrote “Baby Shark.” The CBC describes it as built on a traditional melody sung for years at American summer camps. UPI, citing the BBC, reported that it likely took shape in the U.S. during the 1970s, and some have speculated that the 1975 release of Jaws inspired it.

Jonathan Wright, a children’s entertainer who performs as Johnny Only, told CBC he first heard it more than 20 years earlier while working as a DJ at a kids camp. Counselors there led campers through each verse with hand motions. Wright released his own version in 2011 after seeing how much the kids loved it.

‘Baby Shark Dance’: From Seoul to 17 Billion Views

Pinkfong, a South Korean children’s brand then operating under the company SmartStudy, first posted its take on YouTube in 2015. The video that changed everything was “Baby Shark Dance,” uploaded on June 17, 2016, with vocals by Korean American singer Hope Segoine. NBC News reported that it passed Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” as YouTube’s most viewed video in November 2020 and later became the first video on the platform to reach 10 billion views. As I write this, YouTube’s tally is over 17 billion.

The song also crossed over to the charts. It peaked at Number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100, according to NBC, and CBC noted that it reached Number 6 on the U.K. singles chart. In 2019, Washington Nationals outfielder Gerardo Parra was stuck in a slump and switched his walk-up music to “Baby Shark.” The National Baseball Hall of Fame notes that Parra got two hits that day, and the Nationals swept a doubleheader. Fans at Nationals Park turned the song into a rally ritual, clapping their arms like jaws all the way through a World Series title, and the Hall later displayed a plush Baby Shark in its exhibit on that season.

The “Baby Shark” Copyright Battle

Wright sued Pinkfong in South Korea in 2019. He had told CBC that the company’s version matched his closely, and CNN reported that he pointed to the same key and the same tempo change among the similarities.

Korean courts ruled against him in 2021 and again in 2023. On August 14, 2025, the Supreme Court of Korea upheld those rulings. The court found that Wright’s version did not alter the underlying folk song enough to count as a separate creative work, which meant he had no derivative copyright to enforce. The lower courts had also found clear differences between his version and Pinkfong’s.

Inside the “Baby Shark” Score

The official arrangement is in G major, marked “With a bounce” at 116 BPM. It opens with four bars of no chords. The left hand carries the groove alone for three measures before the right hand enters with a pickup figure in bar 4.

From there, nearly the entire song rides on a four-bar loop with a chord in each measure: G, C, Em7, and D. In Roman numerals, that’s I, IV, vi7, and V. The loop always ends on D, the dominant, so every phrase finishes unresolved. The next “Baby Shark” pickup snaps the harmony back to G and starts the cycle again. That built-in pull toward the top of the loop goes a long way toward explaining why the song feels like it could run forever, until you smash the speakers with your bare fists.

The arrangement saves space by stacking verses on the same few bars with numbered endings. The family members come first, followed by the hunt, and the full set of additional lyrics is printed below the final system on page three.

The big moment comes at measure 17. The key signature shifts from one sharp to four flats, and the chase verse arrives in A♭ major, a half step higher than before. Pop arrangers call this a truck driver’s modulation, and it gives the story’s escape a jolt of energy without changing a single chord relationship. The loop is identical, just transposed: A♭, D♭, Fm7, and E♭.

The ending is the only place the loop truly resolves. The final phrase passes through Fm7 and an E♭sus chord before landing on A♭, closing the song with a suspended dominant that finally gets to rest on the tonic.

For young players, the left hand is a friendly entry point, with mostly quarter-note bass lines under the melody. Beginners who learn the G major section already understand how the A♭ section works, since every chord moves up by the same half step. Their hands will notice the difference, though, as the new key brings in black keys that the G major section mostly avoids.