Introducing The Hook: A Forum for Songs and Songwriters

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What is The Hook?

It’s a songwriter showcase that takes shape as a live show, podcast, and internet/YouTube show. Whether you’re a fan of songs and songwriting, or a songwriter looking for for a forum to showcase your songs, The Hook might appeal to you.

How Does It Work?

Along with featuring more established songwriters, The Hook allows anyone to sign up, and to get the opportunity to have a moment on stage to perform an original song. There will be some amazing songs showcased. There will be some really terrible songs showcased. The hope is we discover the next great song, and the next great songwriter.

Along with performing a song, the songwriter will also be interviewed by a panel of experts and fellow songwriters. When deserved, songs will be praised. If warranted, songs will receive receive constructive criticism. And if the song is outright bad, someone might get “The Hook.”

When and Where Does The Hook Happen?

The next installment of The Hook is on Labor Day, September 1st at Eastside Bowl in Nashville (1508A Gallatin Pike S, Madison, TN 37115) from 7:30-9:30 PM. If you want to sign up to perform, show up early, and bring a guitar.

There will be another show on September 29th at Eastside Bowl as well. For more information about signing up and performing, and to stay up-to-date with future shows, check out savingcountrymusic.com/thehook. You can also follow The Hook on Instagram and Tik-Tok.

What’s the Idea Behind The Hook?

If you’re a fan of great music, you’ve probably been perpetually frustrated how it seems like the best songs, and the best songwriters of our time slide scandalously under-the-radar, while some of the worst songs dominate the charts, and launch superstars. This is true in country music, but really it’s true across all genres.

For nearly 20 years, Saving Country Music has tried to use the platform created here to support worthy songwriters, whether that’s by playing a very small part in helping to launch massive careers, or even just trying to help create sustainable futures for songwriters to continue to pursue their craft. Sometimes these efforts have been incredibly successful. Other times it’s like screaming into a void.

As the American population’s attention spans shorten, as print/online media continues to be depreciated in the attention economy, and at a moment when most everything is moving into the video and social media space, it’s important we stay ahead of the shifting paradigms when it comes to supporting songwriters, or at least try to keep up with these tectonic changes. The encroachment of AI is also creating new, unique challenges.

That is why “The Hook” is being launched. It’s not a singing competition. It’s not a competition at all. It’s a songwriter showcase. It’s an idea of how to mine for the best songs and their creators, and shine a spotlight on them in a way that can help launch sustainable careers, and potentially, stars in the music sphere, while also educating an increasingly unaware public about what a great song is, and how it can offer so much more joy and fulfillment compared to a simple earworm.

The Hook is being founded upon the idea that songs matter, and that a good song can help get you through your daily commute or other doldrums, but a great song can change a life, change the world, or change someone’s whole perspective. But that can only happen if people hear these important songs. We’ve all been in the audience for one of those “moments” when a song hushes a room, gives you goosebumps, and opens up synapses and passages in your brain previously inaccessible. The idea of The Hook is to help facilitate these moments.

How is The Hook going to do this? Along with showcasing some of the best songwriters of our time—both legends and up-and-comers who’ve made careers from the craft—The Hook will throw the barn doors wide any allow anyone, that’s right, anyone, to get up onstage and perform a song. Say goodbye to corporate gatekeepers, career walls, glass ceilings, scenes and cliques, online bubbles, and social media algorithms.

By allowing literally anyone on stage, any any all obstacles will be removed obstructing a song and the audience it deserves. Songwriters sign up before the show, and their names are picked randomly from a bingo hopper to determine who gets to sing.

Could this also result in some really really bad songs and performances? Of course. But that will be part of the fun. Along with hopefully exposing some excellent songs, the incidental comedy that will ensue will be part of the allure too. After all, it’s called “The Hook”—a double entendre referencing how most great songs have a “hook” in the lyric that draws you in, along with the Vaudevillian “hook” that was used to yank terrible performers off the stage.

There is no lack of songwriting showcases out there. But they’re usually populated with pre-scripted moments, votive candles and aroma therapy, soft focus camera angles, and hosts droning on with only positive things to say about often boring songs. Let’s face it, songwriting showcases and writer’s rounds can sometimes be tedious and tiresome. That is not what The Hook will be. The Hook will be funny. The Hook might get rowdy. Not everything is going to be rosy. When a song needs to be roasted, the skewers will come out. It will all be in good fun of course, but it will all be entirely unscripted.

Who knows what will transpire each time? And even though the heart of the show will center around the songwriting traditions of country, folk, roots/Americana, and singer/songwriter stuff, anyone can sign up. Want to sing a capella? Go right ahead. Want to feature a hip-hop song? Be our guest. Remember though, “The Hook” is always looming, as is constructive criticism if it’s called for. Duos can also perform if both performers participated in writing the song, and instrumental accompaniments are allowed for writers who don’t play an instrument.

And through all of this, hopefully The Hook draws a crowd, can help expose talent that would otherwise slip through the cracks or go undiscovered in the current system, and give worthy artists their first or an important opportunity to get exposed to the fans and people who can help take their career to the next level. You can consider The Hook kind of like a glorified open mic, but one where the Internet is the audience as opposed to just a local pub.

Sure, to take the The Hook to a grand level is going to take some time and effort. But there is comparable platform that has done this in the comedic space. The comedy podcast Kill Tony has become the #2 podcast on YouTube by taking the same approach to giving a platform to undiscovered and up-and-coming comedians. No, The Hook won’t be as crude, crass, or polarizing as Kill Tony. After all, this is about songs, not stand-up comedy.

But unquestionably, there is an appetite for exposing and discovering musical talent, and not one that takes the same approach as all the other silly realty TV shows like American Idol, The Voice, and America’s Got Talent that along with refusing to be critical or comedic with contestants, frankly lack the grit and spontaneity that it takes to truly launch artists. The longer these shows go, the less potent they are for actually launching careers. It’s about the entertainment of the show, not the viability of the performer.

And again, The Hook isn’t a competition. It’s not the performer or the performance that is being place front and center. It’s the song. And hopefully as time goes on, The Hook can help put songs back in their rightful place in the hearts of listeners at a time when AI and algorithms put this most pure form of human expression at risk.

And yes, hopefully there will be many episodes of The Hook, and eventually they will all be online. The Hook might also eventually travel beyond Nashville to other locations.

© 2025 Saving Country Music

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