A Custom Birthday Song for Dad He Will Cherish

Your dad's birthday runs the same way it ran last year. He opens the thing, says that is great, and has it back in the box inside four minutes. He owns the drill, the second drill, and a drawer of bits organized better than your kitchen. The sweater went back to the store with the receipt he had kept in the bag. So the only gift left is one he cannot already own and cannot return.

Here is what goes into it. The line he has said at the grill every summer for twenty years, the one the whole family can quote. The team he complains about every fall and watches anyway. The advice he gave you at seventeen that sounded like nagging and turned out to be right about four years ago. The exit he takes to stay off the highway, which adds nine minutes and is not up for discussion. Five or six of those and the song more or less writes itself.

If the sticking point is that nobody in your family agrees on music, this is one you get to settle instead of putting to a vote. Tell us what is on in his truck, or the one band he has paid to see more than once, and we build it in that direction. It is his birthday, so the genre is his and not your brother's.

You are not the one writing it. Send us the details the way you would text them to your sister, half sentences and all, and we do the shaping.

You get an original studio-quality song written from your details, $19.99, delivered by email within 24 hours, so a birthday next week is still comfortably in range.

Open your phone and list the three things he always says, word for word, the way he says them. That is your first verse, and it is more than enough to start the order form with.