This is the most important page on our website. It is also the most honest one.
When you order a memorial song for someone you've lost, you deserve to know exactly how it gets made. Not a marketing version of the process. The real one.
This page walks through the entire workflow — what is done by a human, what is done with the help of modern music technology, and why we use the process we do. Read it before you order. If anything here doesn't feel right, don't order. The honest framing matters more than the sale.
Lyrics are written by our team from the memories and details you share through the questionnaire — their name, their habits, the specific things that made them them. The words are shaped by people, from the raw material only you carry.
The lyrics and your chosen musical style are then produced with the help of AI music tools. This is what enables the speed (5 days, not 6 months) and the price (£89, not £8,000). We're transparent about this rather than describing it as something it isn't.
Once the song is complete, we master it ourselves — the final audio engineering step that polishes the sound quality. Levels, balance, clarity. Every track is checked and finished by a person before it reaches you.
The creative process is human. The production uses modern AI music tools, overseen by a human at every step.
That is the entire honest summary. The longer version follows — but if those two sentences settle the question for you, you have what you need.
You are about to pay £89-£179 for something deeply emotional — a song that honours someone you loved. You have a right to know whether what you receive is a piece of work shaped by another human being, or whether you're paying for the output of a machine.
Most companies in this space — including some of our competitors — dance around this question. They use phrases like "human-crafted" or "artisan-made" that imply more human involvement than there actually is. Or they use phrases like "AI-powered" that imply less.
We are going to tell you the truth, and let you decide.
The process starts with the questionnaire. This is the most important step and it is entirely yours. You share who the person was, what they were like day-to-day, the memories that stand out, what they meant to you, and the musical style and tone that feels right.
The questionnaire is designed to be flexible. Some people write paragraphs. Some write fragments and bullet points. Both produce good songs. What matters is honesty and specificity — the small details that only you remember.
This step takes you about 10 minutes. There is no AI involvement at all. This is just you, telling us about them.
When you submit the questionnaire, your answers go to a real person on our team. They read every word — your descriptions, your memories, the things you said about how this person made you feel.
This is not skimmed by a machine. It is read carefully by someone who understands that what you've shared is precious. They are looking for the specific details that make this person unmistakeable — a phrase they used, a habit, the way they made others feel.
This step takes between 30 minutes and several hours depending on how much you've shared. There is no AI involvement.
The same person who read your answers then works out what the song should say. This is the most creatively important step. They decide which memories to centre, what the emotional arc of the song should be, and how to translate the specific things you've shared into lyrics that capture the person you've described.
Modern AI tools can be used here as a starting point — helping generate first-draft lyric options based on the brief — but the final lyrics are always shaped and refined by a person. The decisions about what stays, what changes, what gets cut, and what gets added are human decisions.
If you've shared a phrase that meant something specific between you, that phrase often becomes the heart of the song. If you've shared a memory that captures who they were, that memory often becomes a verse. These decisions cannot be automated. They require a person who understands what they're reading.
Once the lyrics are finalised, the song is produced. This is the step where modern AI music composition technology is used most heavily.
To be specific: we use AI music tools (such as advanced text-to-music generation platforms) to produce the musical composition, vocal performance, and audio. The team provides detailed creative direction — the genre, the tempo, the instrumental arrangement, the emotional character — and the AI tools handle the technical production work.
A person on our team then reviews the output. If the vocal performance doesn't fit the lyrics, or the instrumentation doesn't match the tone, or anything else needs adjusting, the team iterates and refines until the result is right. The first version that comes back from the AI is rarely the version you receive — multiple iterations are normal.
This is where the speed advantage comes from. A human composer recording a full song with studio musicians might take 1-3 weeks. The AI-assisted production process — with human creative direction and quality control — produces the same result in hours.
Before any song is sent to you, a person on our team listens to it in full and checks: do the lyrics still feel true to what you shared? Does the music match the emotional tone you asked for? Does it sound like a song that honours this specific person?
If anything is wrong, it goes back into production. The song you receive has been reviewed and approved by a human before delivery.
The finished song arrives in your inbox as a studio-quality MP3 and the lyrics as a printable PDF. If you ordered the keepsake bundle, the premium lyric artwork PDF arrives with it.
If anything isn't right — the lyrics, the tone, the musical style, the vocal performance — tell us. One free revision is included with every order. The team revises and resends, usually within 24 hours of your feedback.
If after revision the song still isn't right, you get a full refund. No questions, no debate.
We have thought about this carefully. Three approaches were possible:
Pure human composition. A composer writes the song, records the vocal, produces the music in a studio. This is what services like OurSongRequest do. The advantage is the obvious one — every step is human. The disadvantage is time and cost. A pure-human song typically takes 1-3 weeks and costs £200-£500. For many families that timeline doesn't work, and that cost is out of reach.
Pure AI generation. Tools like Suno and Udio can generate complete songs from text prompts. Anyone can use them. The advantage is speed and low cost. The disadvantage is that prompting an AI to produce a meaningful memorial song requires real skill — and even then, the lack of human curation, emotional judgment, and quality review means most output is generic or off-tone. We have tested this extensively. It doesn't produce songs we'd be willing to charge for.
Hybrid human-led process with AI-assisted production. This is what we do. The creative and emotional decisions are human — what the song should say, what it should feel like, which memories to centre, whether the result is good enough to send. The technical production uses modern AI music tools because they enable the speed and cost level that makes the service accessible. A human is involved at every meaningful decision point.
The result is honest. It is not a pure-human composition. It is also not an AI-generated track. It is something that could only exist with both — human emotional intelligence directing the creative process, and modern technology enabling the production.
This is the harder question, and the only one that really matters. Honest answer: that is for you to decide, not us.
What we can tell you is what hundreds of families have told us. They describe the songs we send as deeply emotional, specific to the person they lost, capturing details that surprised them. They play them at services. They listen to them on anniversaries. They share them with family who couldn't be there.
None of those families care that AI tools were involved in the production. What they cared about was that the song captured the person they loved — that the lyrics referenced specific memories, that the tone fit who they were, that the result felt true.
If knowing that AI is involved in the music production makes the song less meaningful to you, please do not order. Look at OurSongRequest or another pure-human service — they exist for good reason and they do beautiful work. If knowing the honest details about the process doesn't change what you'd want the song to be, then we can help.
Email hello@funeralsongs.co and ask anything. A real person will reply, usually within a few hours. There are no questions about our process we won't answer honestly.
Begin when you're ready. Standard delivery in 5 days, rush in 48 hours, full refund guarantee if the song isn't right.
Begin Their Song →