Sentimental Birthday Gift for Your Best Friend

Why funny and true beats sappy

Friendships run on jokes. You probably have a dozen phrases that would mean nothing to anyone else, and a birthday gift that sounds like a greeting card would feel like it came from a coworker.

All sentiment can make a best friend squirm. All jokes can make the gift feel like a bit. The mix is what works: mostly laughs built from things that happened, with one or two lines near the end that say it straight.

The laugh has a job. It relaxes them, so when the honest line arrives, the one about the winter you couldn't get out of bed and they came over every day with soup, it lands before either of you has time to get awkward about it.

One more thing to watch: a friend's song shouldn't sound like a love song. Keep the words about history, loyalty and laughing at each other, so nobody at the party wonders what they missed.

The three stories every friendship has

Almost every close friendship has these three. Take them one at a time and write down whatever comes to mind before you edit anything.

How you met

The first impression is usually the funniest part, especially if it was wrong. Say you met in a dorm hallway and you were sure she was stuck-up for an entire semester. Or he was the new guy at work who ate the lunch with your name on it.

• Where were you, and what was the first thing either of you said?
• What did you think of them at first, and when did that change?
• Who introduced you, or what were you both doing there?

The trip

Every friendship has one trip that became legend. It's rarely the nicest one. It's the one where something went wrong and you both still talk about it.

• What broke, got lost or got cancelled, and what did you do instead?
• Which line from that trip does one of you still quote?
• Who was driving, and who was in charge of the music?

The 2 a.m. call

This is the sincere part: the night they drove over without asking why, the breakup, the hospital waiting room, the call after the job fell through.

• When did they show up for you when it counted?
• What did they say or do that night that you've never thanked them for?
• What's one thing they told you that you still repeat to yourself?

Say he sat with you in a hospital waiting room until 4 a.m., reading you terrible trivia off his phone so you'd stop staring at the doors. One honest line about that night does more than a whole verse about loyalty.

The first two stories are where the laughs come from. The third is the line they'll play twice.

The funny-and-true test for inside jokes

Not every inside joke belongs in a song they might play for their partner, their kids or their mom. Run each one through four questions:

1. Is it true? Stretch the size of the fish if you want, but the story should have happened.
2. Is it on both of you? The best jokes poke fun at the friendship, not only at them.
3. Could their mom hear it? Skip exes by name, anything that could get someone in trouble, and anything they'd have to explain at a family dinner.
4. Does it work in one line? If it needs a ten-minute backstory, save it for the toast.

Say your friend once locked her keys in the car with the engine running at a gas station outside Albuquerque, and ever since, any small disaster between you is "pulling an Albuquerque". That passes all four. It's true, you were laughing too hard to help, her mom has heard it a dozen times, and it fits in one line.

Matching the song to the birthday

The age can tilt the balance. A 30th can be mostly jokes. A 50th can carry more of the straight lines, because the friendship has had time to earn them. Choose Birthday as the occasion, or Friendship if you're giving it on a day that's only about the two of you.

If the whole group wants in, one song can include several names. Collect one story from each friend in a shared note, pick the best three, and it'll sound like your group instead of a group card.

For the sound, pick the genre that matches the friendship. If you shout-sang 2000s Pop on every road trip, choose Pop and the 2000s. If your friendship lives on porches and tailgates, Country tells a story well. Rap / Hip-Hop suits a friendship built on roasting each other, and Acoustic works when the sincere part is the point.

How to give it so it lands

Where you play it depends on which way the song leans.

• Mostly funny: play it at the birthday dinner or the party. The jokes land better at a table full of people who know the stories.
• Mostly sincere: send it to them alone on the morning of their birthday, and let them decide whether the group hears it later.
• Either way, say something yourself. One line in your own words before you press play: "I tried to fit fifteen years of you into one song. It didn't all fit."

Then let them react however they react. Some friends laugh through the whole thing and text you at midnight about the last verse.

Their birthday, your stories

When you have the three stories and one honest line, start your best friend's song. The questions take about three minutes, and we write their song from your answers.

A custom song from Only Happy Tears is free to start and delivered in hours, so even if their birthday snuck up on you, there's still time to give them something better than a card.