Hello. We are Songbird, and we make songs out of other people’s stories. You tell us about someone you love, in your own words, and we turn it into a finished song with their name in it: a birthday song, a love song, or a lullaby for the smallest person in the house.
This is the first post on our blog, so it seemed right to start with who we are and what this page is going to be for.
Why songs
Most of the best things about a person never get written down. The nickname only the family uses. The way they dance while the kettle boils. The joke that has survived twenty years of Christmas dinners. Those details are the whole person, and they tend to live in the gaps between photographs.
A song is a good home for them. It gets played in the car, sent to the group chat, sung at bedtime until everyone knows the words. A card is read once. A song gets asked for again.
You bring the story. We bring the tune. The bit in the middle is where the care goes.
How it works, briefly
You answer a few questions and tell us about them in a handful of sentences. We write the lyrics and show you every word before you pay anything, so you know exactly what will be sung. Then it is recorded and lands in your inbox within 24 hours, yours to keep. A personalised song is $24.99 and a lullaby is $9.99.
If you would rather listen first, the free song library has thousands of finished songs for hundreds of first names, each one free to play and download.
What this blog is for
Short posts, mostly. Stories behind songs we have loved making, small ideas for birthdays and bedtimes, and the occasional note about what we are working on. For longer gift guides, there is the ideas page.
And because we are a song company, every post comes with a song of its own. This one is called Tell Me Yours. It is about the small, true things everybody carries around, and what happens when somebody finally asks to hear them. The words are below.
This post’s song
Tell Me Yours
Acoustic folk · Warm · Fingerpicked · Hopeful
A gentle acoustic welcome, written for the first post on the Songbird blog: a song about the small true stories everybody carries, and what happens when somebody listens.
Read the words
Verse 1
There's a name you only use at homeA dance you did when the kettle sangA street you walked when you were youngAnd a laugh that rings the way it always rang
Pre-chorus
Little things you never wrote downLittle things that make you, you
Chorus
So tell me yours, I'm listeningEvery small and shining thingWe'll find the tune that it was always meant to beTell me yours, and we will sing
Verse 2
There's a coat still hanging by the doorA joke that only two of you getA Sunday song you can't forgetAnd a promise that you haven't broken yet
Pre-chorus
Little things you never wrote downLittle things that make you, you
Chorus
So tell me yours, I'm listeningEvery small and shining thingWe'll find the tune that it was always meant to beTell me yours, and we will sing
Bridge
It doesn't have to rhymeIt doesn't have to be grandJust give me four true linesAnd I will understand
Chorus
So tell me yours, I'm listeningEvery small and shining thingWe'll find the tune that it was always meant to beTell me yours, and we will sing
Outro
Tell me yoursAnd we will sing