A long letter makes a long song, and that is the point
Songs for a father cannot be timed on their own — too many of them came from one person — but what decides their length is measured across the whole site: a song made from someone's own lyrics lasts as long as its words take to sing, roughly four seconds a line, and 13% of those pass five minutes against 4% of described songs. About half of the songs for a father here start from lyrics, so expect long.
Very few are instrumental. A song for a father is something being said, and the length follows from how much there is to say.
So plan for the room rather than fighting the length. A four-minute song is long for a table of people waiting to eat and exactly right for a drive, a headphone listen, or a slideshow. If it has to play in front of people, play the first verse and chorus and fade at about a minute.
About half of these were already written
About half of the requests naming a father are lyrics people wrote rather than descriptions. So this page has two kinds of visitor, and the useful advice splits.
| If you have already written something | If you would rather describe it |
|---|---|
| Paste it in Custom mode — it gets sung as written, line for line | Write a paragraph; the median description here runs about sixty words |
| Pick one line to repeat and mark it [Chorus]; three pastes in ten have none | Spend the words on facts rather than praise — what he does, not how great he is |
| Break any line longer than about twelve words, which is where a singer breathes | Name a genre he actually listens to; unstated, it defaults to a mid-tempo ballad |
| More on shaping pasted text: the lyrics-to-song page | Say who is singing: you, the grandchildren, or everyone |
If yours mentions children or grandchildren, name them and give each one a line of their own. A grandchild's name in a verse is the part that gets played again.
What to put in it
The failure mode is not bad writing, it is writing that would be true of anybody's father. Read it back with his name swapped for someone else's; if it still reads true, it is not finished yet. The repair is always the same and costs one line: replace an adjective with a fact.
- What he says. Not his philosophy — the actual phrase, the one the family quotes back at each other.
- A thing he fixed, or tried to. The specific object, and whether it worked.
- His job, named plainly, and one true detail about doing it for that long.
- The music he actually plays. This is a style instruction and a character detail at the same time.
- Something he did that he has never been thanked for out loud. Usually the line people go quiet at.
- If he is gone, say so plainly rather than writing around it — the memorial page is built for that and handles tense properly.
There is no example song on this page. Every song made here names the person it is for, and often the grandchildren too, so nothing in our anonymous pool can be published. If you want to hear what a pasted lyric sounds like before you write one, the text-to-song page has two that name nobody.
Before you press Create
- Have you already written something? Paste it — about half of people here do
- A phrase he actually says
- One thing he fixed, and whether it worked
- The music he really listens to
- Grandchildren by name, if they are in it
- If it has to play in a room, plan to fade after the first chorus — these run long
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated