Custom songs by occasion
A custom song for dad, and not another pair of socks
Father's Day for a man who says he does not want anything and has three unopened whisky glasses to prove it. From $24.99.
Dads have destroyed the gift market on their own. He says the word fine about a present he genuinely likes. He has a shed with a labelled drawer for every screw and no visible interest in owning anything else. So he gets socks, a barbecue tool, another bottle he will save for an occasion that never arrives.
A song is the one thing he cannot politely file away. It has his terrible joke in it, the car he refused to scrap, the phrase he has said at every family departure since 1994. He will make a face at the first chorus and he will play it to somebody at work on Monday.
What to put in a Father's Day brief
Fathers write well because they are made of habits and repeated lines. You do not need feelings for this bit. You need evidence.
The joke he has told a thousand times
Word for word, including the bit where he laughs before the end. Family in-jokes are the fastest way into a chorus he will actually remember.
What he is like in a car
The route he insists is quicker. The petrol station stance. One radio station, one volume, no discussion. Half of all dad songs live in a car.
The thing he built, mended or refused to replace
The fence, the fifteen year old lawnmower, the boiler he has been coaxing along since you were at school. Practical love is still love and it makes concrete lyrics.
The one time he said something serious
Most dads have about four of these in a lifetime. If you can remember where you were standing when he said it, that goes in and it is the moment the song turns.
Which genre tends to work
Gentle rock
Built for the man whose entire music taste stopped developing in 1987, and who will approve of a guitar.
Country
Straight storytelling, no fuss, room for the funny lines and the serious one in the same verse.
Reggae
For a dad who has ruled the barbecue speaker for twenty years. Loose, warm and impossible to be embarrassed by.
Jazz
The choice for a father with actual opinions about records. Understated, and he will notice the arrangement.
He will pretend it is too much
Expect deflection. A comment about how much it must have cost, a joke halfway through the first verse, a sudden need to check something in the kitchen. That is not the song failing, that is a man being handed a sincere thing in front of witnesses.
Play it once, hand him the link, then leave him alone with it. The reaction that counts happens the second time, usually when nobody else is in the room, and you find out about it a week later from your mum.
Stepdads, grandads and the man who did the job
A good share of these are not for a biological father. They are for a stepdad who turned up and stayed, a grandad who did the school runs, an uncle who was the one who taught you to drive. Those songs are easier to write, because the reason you are grateful is specific rather than assumed.
Say plainly in the brief who he is to you and what he did. The lyric will handle it directly instead of using the word dad, which is usually the exact thing that makes those songs land.
When to order for Father's Day
A few days ahead is sensible if you want to play it at a lunch or a pub table, mainly so you can check it on decent speakers first rather than discovering the phone volume problem in front of everyone.
Left it until the morning, as many people do with dads specifically, then Express takes one hour. Standard is 16 hours and Priority is 4 hours if you have a bit more room.
Questions
Can the song be funny rather than emotional?
Yes, and for a lot of dads that is the right call. Load the brief with the jokes, the catchphrases and the driving. We will still put one true line near the end, because a song that is only funny does not survive the second play.
What if I do not have a big emotional story?
Most people do not. Habits work better anyway: how he answers the phone, what he eats standing at the counter, the thing he always says as you leave. Small and true beats big and vague every time.
Can I pick a male singer?
Yes. You choose the voice and the genre in the form, or leave both to us and we match them to the story you have written.
How does he actually get it?
It arrives on its own page with the lyric sheet, plus a permanent download he keeps. No subscription, no watermark, no expiry, so he can put it on his phone and play it in the car.
Ready when you are
About ten minutes of questions. A finished song in as little as an hour, from $24.99, yours to keep forever.
Start their song