The one song every ceremony already has
Elgar wrote the Pomp and Circumstance marches between 1901 and 1930. The trio section of the first one — the tune everybody can hum — was played at a graduation for the first time on 28 June 1905, at Yale, and it has been the processional at most American high-school and college ceremonies since. It is the most dependable piece of music in a young person's life, and it says nothing whatsoever about them.
That is the useful frame for what you are making. You are not writing a better processional. You are writing the one piece of music in the whole day that could only be about this person, which means “sound like a graduation song” is not the job — it is the failure mode. The generator will do that part unprompted, with whatever you decline to tell it.
Describe the person, not only the music
It is easy to be precise about sound and vague about who the song is for. The generator has a default for the first and none for the second, so the table below is where the words should go.
- Their name, spelled the way it sounds, and what they just finished — the school, the degree, the trade, the programme.
- Where they are going next. The job, the city, the year off; “no idea yet, and that's allowed” is a better line than most.
- One thing that was hard. A song that is nothing but congratulations slides straight past people. The line anyone remembers is the one about the year it nearly didn't happen.
- One private detail, with no explanation attached — the 6:10 bus, the kitchen table, the dog who sat through every revision night.
- Who is singing it. “From your mum” and “from your housemates” are two different songs, and nothing in the brief tells the generator which one it is writing.
| What to put in the brief | Why |
|---|---|
| The graduate's name, spelled the way it sounds | There is no default for it; leave it out and the song sings “you” |
| The school, college or programme | Sung as written — write it the way it is said aloud |
| The graduation year | The one number that dates the song forever |
| One private detail | The 6:10 bus, the kitchen table — the thing only you would know |
| An instrument or a genre | Useful, but the generator has a default for both |
None of this is a mistake; a piano is a real choice. But the generator has a default piano and no default for your sister's name, the bus she caught at ten past six for three years, or the autumn she nearly dropped out. Spend the words where there is no default.
Who it's from changes everything after the first line
The single largest change you can make to a graduation song is naming the sender. It sets the pronouns, the vocabulary, the permitted amount of sentiment, and whether the joke about the parking lot belongs in at all.
| Sent by | What to put in | What to keep out |
|---|---|---|
| A parent | The long view — the first day of school, what you watched them get through, the thing you will not manage to say at dinner | Slang you would not otherwise use. It reads as a costume |
| A friend or housemate | The jokes, the flat, the specific disasters, the nickname nobody else uses | Sentiment with no evidence. Friends earn the soft line by spending four others on the truth |
| A teacher, to a whole class | Shared things only — the trip, the exam week, the room number — and a plural “you” that never picks favourites | Individual names, unless you name every one of them |
Where it fits in the day
Songs made here run 3:18 at the median, and more than a third land between three and four minutes. Graduation songs are too few to quote a figure of their own. Plan around three and a half minutes.
That is almost exactly a photo slideshow: forty photos at five seconds each is 3:20. It is far too long in front of a speech — take the first verse and chorus, about forty-five seconds, and fade. And it is almost certainly not going to happen during the ceremony, whose running order was fixed weeks ago by someone who has never heard of you. This is a song for the dinner, the party, the video, or the drive home.
Make it a few days early. Each generation returns two takes, and you may want another round once you have read the lyrics back. The morning of the ceremony is the worst possible time to discover you want to change a line.
There is no example song on this page. Every graduation song made here is about a named person at a named school, and none of them belongs on a public page. A page with nothing publishable gets no example rather than a borrowed one.
Before you press Create
- Their name, spelled the way it sounds
- What they finished — school, degree, trade or programme
- What comes next, even if the answer is “no idea yet”
- One hard thing from the last few years
- One private detail, left unexplained
- Who the song is from
- A style in four or five words — and the year, if you want it dated forever
Sources
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated