The Saving Country Music 2024 Song of the Year

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To see the nominees for Saving Country Music’s 2024 Song of the Year, CLICK HERE.

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Music isn’t just here to fill empty moments of time, and distract us from the mundane actions that make up the majority of our days. Sure, music might be valuable in this capacity too—taking the edge off the cold steel of reality as it rakes across the nerve endings.

But the best of music inspires the best of us as people. It rewires our brains to see the bigger picture beyond the smaller moments, and opens an avenue to allow us to become something closer to the individuals we were put on this earth to be.

Cody Jinks is a character in country music who will go down in history as a disruptor, a pioneer, as someone who in an independent capacity went on to rewrite what was possible for a country performer, and inspired many of his peers to think differently about how to approach their music and careers. In large part, Cody’s 2024 album Change The Game is about this very thing—taking stock on what he’s accomplished thus far.

If you’ll notice though, Cody Jinks sings the title track to the album in the past tense. Jinks laid the groundwork for the country music revolution we’re currently in the midst of, breaking down doors and shattering glass ceilings that allowed folks like Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan to excel and go even a step further.

Some these days like to think of Cody’s greatest music powers as being in the past tense as well, always measuring him against his magum opus, 2015’s Adobe Sessions. But what Jinks proves with the song “What You Love” is that he still has something to say, still has significant things to contribute, and can still inspire well beyond the power of even some of the most gifted and potent of songwriters.

In 2015, Cody Jinks won the Saving Country Music Song of the Year with the song “David.” In 2024, he wins the Saving Country Music Song of the Year with “What You Love.”

The fact that Cody Jinks is singing “What You Love” to his own children imbues both the song and the performance with impassioned bursts of sincere emotion. But of course, this is a song we all deserve to hear, and to afford careful and quiet moments to so that we can digest and understand it fully.

Few things in the busy and noisy moments of everyday life truly make you pause and take stock. “What You Love” has that power. To say the things Cody Jinks says in “What You Love” while avoiding sounding trite is no small task. It’s one of the genius elements of the song.

As the end of the year approaches, the changing of the calendar allows all of us to take stock, recalibrate, and set resolutions for the next moments of our lives. No better time than the present for the words of “What You Love” to ring through our souls.

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“What You Love” was written by Cody Jinks with Tennessee Jet.

© 2025 Saving Country Music

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