A Custom Birthday Song for Your Brother

There is a list of things you and your brother both know and have never once said out loud. The year he covered for you. The thing he turned out to be right about. Whatever happened the summer everything changed. A birthday is the one day saying any of it would not be strange, and you still will not, because that is not how the two of you talk.

A song can carry the sentimental line for you. Put it in the second verse, right after the part about the car he wrecked at nineteen and the fact that he still cannot cook rice without setting off the smoke alarm. That is the shape of the thing. The roast buys you the room, and the one true line is what you spend it on.

Tell us the ratio you want. Mostly jokes with a soft landing at the end is the ask when your parents are in the room, because the soft part is there for your mom and the jokes are there for him. If it is a fortieth and he has had a rough year, flip it and lead with the real thing.

Build for the second play, not the first. Jokes about nobody in particular go flat on a repeat, and details do not. Send the nickname only your family uses, the team he will not stop defending, the sentence he says every single time he walks out the door.

You get an original studio-quality song written from your details, $19.99, emailed to you within 24 hours, so ordering tonight for tomorrow night is inside the window.

Start by writing down five things about him you would never put in a card. That is most of the form already filled in.