You don't have to be a poet. You don't have to know what a chorus is. You don't even have to be sure what you want.
Every week we read briefs that start with "sorry, I'm bad at writing" and end up as the songs people text us about three months later. Some of the best briefs we've ever received are four lines long. Some are messy paragraphs full of crossed-out sentences. Both work — because what we need from you isn't writing. It's specifics.
This is a short, honest guide to writing a custom song brief that turns into a song you'll cry over. Written by the studio that writes them.
What a song brief actually is
When you order a custom song from us (or from any service that writes them — the principles apply to all), you're filling out a form. The form asks for a few things: who the song is for, what occasion, the mood, your relationship to them, and the story you want the song to carry.
The form is not asking you to write lyrics. It's asking you to show us the person. Specific, true things about them — the way they hold a coffee cup, the running joke at their expense, the moment from last Christmas you can't stop thinking about. From those specifics, we write the song.
Generic adjectives make generic songs. Specific moments make great ones. That's the whole game.
The three rules that matter
1. Be specific, not flattering
Briefs that just say "she's the best mom ever" become songs that just say "she's the best mom ever" — and those songs sound like Hallmark cards set to music. We've written them when the brief was generic. They land flat every time.
Compare:
"My mom is amazing and has always supported me."
versus
"My mom drove four hours to bring me chicken soup when I had food poisoning at uni. She also still asks if I've eaten before she asks anything else when I call. She lights candles in church for people she's never met. She makes me feel like I matter, in a way I didn't realize until I left home."
The second one gives us five separate hooks to write from. "Drove four hours for chicken soup" — that's a verse. "Asks if I've eaten before anything else" — that's a chorus line. Specific is gold.
2. Include the small, weird things
The lines that land hardest in songs are the ones nobody else would know to write. The way he loads the dishwasher wrong. The way she pronounces "particular" wrong every time. The dog's name. The nickname only the two of you use.
These are the things that prove the song was made for them and no one else. Hallmark can write about a mother's love. Hallmark cannot write that her name is Patricia, she calls herself Patty when she's feeling fun, and she loved her sister Marie more than she ever let on.
If you're not sure something belongs in the brief, put it in. Better too much detail than too little.
3. Tell us the moment, not the conclusion
Don't write us conclusions ("she changed my life"). Write us moments ("the time I was 12 and crying in the hallway and she sat on the floor with me and didn't say anything for an hour"). Moments give us images. Images become lyrics.
If you can write us one good moment, you've given us 30% of a great song. Three good moments and the song writes itself.
The brief structure that works
If you're staring at a blank form and don't know where to start, this is what we recommend. It's not the only way; it's just a sane default.
Section 1: Who is this for
Name. Relationship to you. Age (matters more than you'd think — the song's vocabulary changes for a 25-year-old versus a 75-year-old). Anything else basic: do they work, what do they do, where do they live.
Section 2: What's the occasion
Birthday (which one — 30th hits different than 70th). Anniversary. Wedding. Memorial. "Just because" is also valid; some of our favorite briefs are people writing songs for no reason except they wanted to.
If the occasion has a date, tell us. We'll work to it.
Section 3: The story
This is the meat. 4-10 sentences of specifics. Use the rules above. Talk about how you met, an inside joke, a moment from last year you keep thinking about, the way they make you feel about yourself.
If you're writing about a partner: how you met, the first big fight you survived, the version of them only you see.
If you're writing about a parent: a moment from your childhood with them, a specific thing they always say or do, what you want them to know that you've never said out loud.
If you're writing about a friend: the night that defines your friendship, the in-jokes, the time they showed up for you.
If it's a memorial: a letter about who they were. As much or as little as feels right. We treat every word with care.
Section 4: The mood
Warm, funny, sentimental, somber, upbeat. Sometimes more than one. Tell us what you want the listener to feel by the second chorus. Soft tearing-up? Big laugh-cry? Quiet contemplation? All valid.
If you have reference songs (Bon Iver vibes, Coldplay-but-acoustic, something like Adele), name them. We won't copy them — we can't, for licensing reasons — but we'll match the emotional register.
Section 5: Voice and tempo
Female voice, male voice, or both. Faster or slower. If you want to dance to it at a wedding, tell us; we'll match the BPM to a standard slow-dance tempo. If you want a ballad or something more upbeat, say so.
Real briefs that became great songs
To make this concrete, here are anonymized versions of briefs we've received that led to songs the customer messaged us about months later.
What worked here: every sentence is a specific, visible detail. The "loads dishwasher offensively" line ended up almost verbatim in the bridge. The "6 minutes late" line became part of the chorus. He cried.
The brief gave us images we could write into lyrics directly. "Hands and the candle and the kitchen" became the structural backbone of the song. Her grandkids sang along by the second play.
For memorial briefs we always read every word twice. The "miss him at red lights" line was the one we built the chorus around — small enough to feel true, big enough to break the room. Played at the service. Still played in the family car on his birthday.
What NOT to include
A few things that make briefs harder to turn into great songs:
- Lyric directives. Don't tell us "make sure the song rhymes 'love' with 'above'." We're going to write the lyrics. The rhyme scheme will come from the language, not from imposed rules.
- Long lists of generic adjectives. "Kind, caring, loving, supportive, hard-working, dedicated" tells us nothing. One specific anecdote does the work of all six adjectives.
- Trying to write like you think a songwriter writes. Don't fancy it up. Write like you'd text a close friend describing the person. That's the right register.
- "Make it amazing." We will try. But we can't optimize for "amazing" — we can optimize for "true to this person." Trust the second one.
What happens after you submit
Once you submit the brief, here's what we actually do (no marketing fluff version):
- A writer reads the brief and drafts lyrics. This usually takes 30-60 minutes. They pull out the specifics that are doing the most work and structure them into verses, a chorus, and a bridge.
- A producer takes the lyrics and composes the music — chord progression, tempo, mood, instrumentation. They pick or generate the voice based on what you specified (female / male / both).
- We do a first listen as a team. If anything sounds off — generic, AI-tell-y, off-mood — we redo that section. We don't ship until at least one human signs off.
- The song lands in your inbox as an MP3 (and WAV + lyric video for higher tiers). You listen.
- If something's wrong — wrong tone, wrong lyric, wrong vibe — tell us. We rewrite once at no cost. If the second version still isn't right, full refund and you keep both files.
From brief submit to delivery, the typical window is 1.5-3 hours for the Personal tier. Quick is up to 24 hours. Premium gets priority handling.
The trick nobody talks about
The single thing that separates a great custom song from a forgettable one is whether the brief made the songwriter feel something. If your brief made you feel something while you were writing it, it probably made us feel something when we read it. That's the song-quality predictor.
So write the brief like it matters. Take 10 minutes instead of 3. Tell us the thing you almost left out because you weren't sure if it was relevant. That thing — that's usually the chorus.