What to Say in a Valentine's Day Song

Most Valentine's Day songs fail the way greeting cards fail. They are well made and they could be about absolutely anyone. The fix is not better writing, it is better raw material: two or three facts about your relationship that nobody outside it would know.

Get those down and the rest follows, whether you are making a custom Valentine's Day song for a couple or just deciding what to write in a card.

Stop trying to sum up the relationship

The summary is where these go wrong. "You changed my life" is true and it is also what everyone says. Try the opposite: pick the smallest true thing you can find.

• The film you have both fallen asleep during four times
• What they say every single time the food arrives
• The argument you still bring up as a joke
• The thing you learned to cook because of them

Any one of those is a better opening line than a paragraph about forever.

It probably should not be a ballad

Here is what the Aamras briefs show. Across romantic, anniversary and apology songs, the mood people pick most often is Joyful, at 47 requests, just ahead of Sentimental at 46 and Romantic at 43. Upbeat and Fun follows at 31. The slow romantic ballad is not what most people are asking for even when the occasion is explicitly romantic.

That matches how most couples actually talk to each other. If you are funny together, a solemn song will feel like a costume.

Three openings you can borrow

If the blank box is the problem, these three shapes cover most relationships, and each one forces a specific answer rather than a feeling:

• The first time. Not the meeting itself, but the first time you thought this might be serious. Usually a much odder moment, and a much better one.
• The running joke. Every couple has one line that has been repeated so often it barely means anything any more. In a song it means everything, because only two people on earth get it.
• The unglamorous stretch. The month of hospital visits, the year of the tiny flat, the job that nearly broke them. Songs about the easy parts are forgettable. Songs about the hard parts are not.

Pick one. You do not need all three, and a song trying to cover all three ends up covering none.

February 14 is not the only date that works

A song does not expire. Plenty of people send one on the day and plenty send one on an ordinary Tuesday in August, where it lands harder because nothing prompted it. If you have missed the date entirely, the song still works; the occasion was never the point.

The same logic applies to a love song for a husband or one for a partner living abroad. The date is an excuse. The details are the gift.

If you are on the receiving end

One thing worth saying to anyone who gets a song like this: react in front of them if you can. The person who made it spent the whole time imagining your face, and a text saying "this is so sweet" two hours later is the one outcome they were quietly dreading.

If you are apart, record yourself listening to the first thirty seconds and send that back. It is a small thing and it closes the loop the gift was built around.

If you want a worked example

There is a step by step version of this for one specific case: how to create a Valentine's Day song, from the first detail to the finished track.

Where to start

Write three specifics, choose a language and a mood, read the lyrics and change anything that is not right. A fully personalized song is INR 249. Begin here.

Quick questions

How early should I make it?

It takes minutes, so there is no planning deadline. Making it early only means you have time to sit with the lyrics.

Can I choose a male or female voice?

Yes, along with the language and the mood.

What if the lyrics are not right?

You edit them before the song is generated, so nothing is recorded until you are happy with the words.