Choosing funeral songs for your grandad

Grandads have a way of being in the background of everything. The one in the shed with the radio on. The one who drove you to football and pretended not to care about the score. The one who whistled the same tune for forty years and never once told you what it was called.

When it comes to choosing music for his funeral, that tune is often the best place to start. Before you search for lists, sit with the family for a few minutes and ask what he used to hum, sing in the car, or turn up when it came on the telly. You might be surprised how quickly everyone lands on the same song.

For a lot of grandads, the music that mattered most came from when they were young. If he was the sort to talk about the old days, something like We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn can carry a whole generation into the room. If he loved a proper crooner, Andy Williams singing Moon River or Louis Armstrong with What a Wonderful World tend to feel gentle without being heavy.

Some grandads were never gentle about anything, and that is worth honouring too. If he spent Saturday nights belting out Rod Stewart, then Sailing might be exactly right, even if it gets a few people laughing through their tears. If home and where he came from meant everything to him, Green, Green Grass of Home by Tom Jones has a pull that many families recognise straight away.

It also helps to think about who will be in the room. Grandchildren often remember him differently from his own children. Your mum might picture the man who walked her down the aisle, while you picture the one who let you win at cards. There is no right answer here. Sometimes the kindest choice is one song for the start of the service that feels like him to the older family, and one for the end that feels like him to the younger ones.

Don't worry if the song you pick is a little unexpected. A grandad who loved a cheesy pop record deserves to go out to it. People will smile, and that smile will say more about who he was than anything formal ever could.

If you'd like a wider set of ideas to look through, our guide to funeral songs has plenty more to start from.

And if none of them sound quite like him, we can help with that. We write a song about the person, built from the stories your family shares, from the shed and the whistling to the jokes only you lot understood. You can see how it works here.