Session Five 2026 Lyric Contest Winners
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American Songwriter has announced the winners of its Session Five 2026 Lyric Contest, publishing the winning entries from first through fourth place. The competition invites songwriters to submit original lyrics for judging, with winning pieces showcased on the publication's website; entries for the subsequent Session Six contest are now open.
The featured lyrics span deeply personal themes, including a family Fourth of July gathering shadowed by a young serviceman's impending deployment, a reflection on a mother's unfulfilled dream of travel and escape, and a multi-verse account of a couple building a rural homestead from recycled materials over many years. Each piece uses recurring choruses and vivid imagery to build emotional narratives around loss, unspoken truths and hard-won resilience.
- American Songwriter revealed Session Five 2026 Lyric Contest winners.
- Winning lyrics cover family, loss, dreams and homesteading themes.
- Entries for the next Session Six contest are now open.
Full account
American Songwriter has announced the winners of its Session Five 2026 Lyric Contest, an ongoing competition in which entrants submit lyrics on their own, without a recording or musical arrangement, to be judged purely on the strength of the writing. The publication has published the top four placed entries in full and confirmed that the winning song was "Nobody Said Goodbye", written by Samantha Cugini, who records under the name Sammi Lee. The same lyric also earned Cugini a separate accolade, the outlet's Red, White and Blue promotion, giving her a rare double win with one song.
"Nobody Said Goodbye" is set at a Fourth of July family gathering, built around the small, familiar rituals of a backyard cookout: grandparents fussing over food and the grill, neighbours drifting in to talk about nothing in particular, and children playing nearby. Woven through these details is a young relative home on leave from the Air Force, whose relatives sense, without ever saying aloud, that his departure back to service is imminent. Speaking to American Songwriter, Cugini explained that the song was sparked by an old photograph of her own father on leave from the Air Force during the Vietnam War, taken at a similar backyard occasion. She was careful to note that the lyric is not a literal retelling of her father's experience, who survived the war before she was born, but an imagined story built outward from the photograph, exploring the idea that a goodbye is sometimes only recognised for what it was long after it has passed.
The contest's judging panel, which included artists and writers such as Caitlyn Smith, Danielle Bradbery, Harper Grace, Jillian Jacqueline, Lily Rose, Erin Enderlin, Katie Pruitt, Parker Welling, Chase McDaniel and Kassi Ashton, responded strongly to the winning lyric. Several praised its restraint, noting that the emotional weight of the piece comes from what is left unspoken amid the ordinary details of the party, rather than from any dramatic declaration. Comparisons were drawn to the understated storytelling style of songwriter Don Schlitz, while other judges described the lyric as cinematic, saying they could picture the scene playing out as they read it.
Alongside the winning entry, American Songwriter also published the second, third and fourth-placed lyrics from the same contest round. One tells of a woman whose dreams of travel and a different life were never realised, left watching aircraft pass overhead with a packed suitcase she never used; judges likened its wistful imagery to classic songs such as "Carolina in My Mind" and "Angel from Montgomery". Another followed a couple building a life together on a plot of land over many years, marked by hardship and small triumphs. The publication has since opened entries for its Session Six 2026 Lyric Contest.
Where outlets differ
Source 1 is the publication's own results post: it reproduces the winning lyrics for all four placings in full but does not name any of the songwriters or explain the judging.
Source 2 concentrates entirely on the judging panel's reactions and quotes praising the winning lyric, but does not identify the author or give the song's backstory.
Source 3 is an interview focused solely on the first-place winner, Samantha Cugini (Sammi Lee): it is the only source to name her, explain the song's personal inspiration (a photograph of her father during the Vietnam War), and reveal that the same song separately won the outlet's Red, White and Blue promotion.
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