Many of these arrive already written
Across the site, nearly half of what people make starts from finished lyrics rather than a description. That means the useful advice here depends almost entirely on which group you are in.
| If you have written something | If you would rather describe it |
|---|---|
| Paste it in Custom mode — it gets sung as written, line for line | Write a paragraph — enough to say who, where, and one thing only she does |
| Pick one line to repeat and mark it [Chorus]. Three pastes in ten have no repeating line at all | Spend the words on facts, not praise: what she does, not how wonderful she is |
| Break lines longer than about twelve words — that is where the singer breathes | Name the genre she 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, or you and the children |
One thing worth knowing if you are describing: left unsaid, you get a single voice to a single person, so if yours is a family song, say so explicitly.
What makes it hers
The failure mode is not bad writing, it is true-of-anyone writing. Read the brief back with her name swapped for somebody else's; if it would still be true, it is not finished. The fix is always the same and always cheap: replace one adjective with one fact.
- Something she does that you would only notice living with her — how she answers the phone, the order she unpacks the shopping, what she says to the dog.
- A place with a year on it. Where you met, where you were when something changed, the flat you both disliked.
- One thing she did that she has never been thanked for out loud. This is usually the line people cry at.
- A running argument, named affectionately. It says more about a marriage than any compliment.
- Her name, spelled the way it sounds — and listen to both takes, because names are exactly where the two differ.
Length, and when to play it
Length follows the lyric, close to line for line. Measured across the site, eight sung lines come back at about a minute, thirty-five at about three, and sixty or more run past four.
So every line counts: roughly four seconds each. For a short song, write eight lines or so; for a long one, go past sixty or add a bridge. An exact length is a Pro control in Custom mode.
Make it a few days before you need it. Two takes come back per generation, and reading the lyrics through usually earns one more round — which is a calm twenty minutes on a Tuesday and a bad ten minutes on the morning itself.
There is no example song on this page. Every song made here names the person it is for, and a wife's name in a lyric someone wrote at their kitchen table is not ours to publish. The love song page has one that names nobody, if you want to hear what a pasted lyric sounds like.
Before you press Create
- Have you already written something? If so, paste it — nearly half of everything made here starts that way
- One ordinary detail only you would notice
- A place with a year on it
- One thing she has never been thanked for out loud
- Her name, spelled the way it sounds
- Who is singing — and say so if the children are in it, because the default here is one voice
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated