Kahan and his dogs on the cover of his breakthrough album Stick Season
Associated acts:
Influenced by:
Noah Kahan (born January 1, 1997) is an American Singer-Songwriter. Born and raised in Vermont, the pop-folk musician is known for his introspective lyrics focusing on subjects like love, mental health struggles, and growing up in rural New England.
Kahan signed with Republic Records in 2017 and released his first album Busyhead the following year, but he first achieved genuine breakout success in 2022 with the release of his third album Stick Season. His profile was further raised to the mainstream in 2023 with the release of an expanded deluxe edition of Stick Season and the accompanying single "Dial Drunk", which went viral on TikTok and attracted the attention of major artists like Post Malone, whose remixed version of the song lifted it to the Top 40. The album and its title track have subsequently gone #1 in multiple countries, and his subsequent collaborations with several other musicians in the folk and pop sphere have made him one of the more prominent young artists of the early 2020s.
Discography:
Albums:
- Busyhead (2018)Singles
- I Was / I Am (2021)Singles
- Stick Season (2022)Singles
- Stick Season (We'll All Be Here Forever) (2023)
- Stick Season (Forever) (2024)
I love Vermont, but it's the season of the tropes:
- 555: "She Calls Me Back" prominently features the singer reciting the phone number of the woman he loves, but it's a digit shy of a real number.
- Album Title Drop: A variant. "We'll all be here forever", the subtitle of Stick Season's deluxe edition, is dropped at the end of "You're Gonna Go Far", the last "new" song on that version of the album.
- Brutal Honesty: "Northern Attitude" is brimming with this, with the Stick Season album opener addressing the listener with blunt observations about the human condition and the singer's own mental health. This brutal honesty about himself and others is present throughout much of the singer's discography, with that "northern attitude" being something he believes he shares in common with many from the Northeastern United States.
- Creator Thumbprint: Kahan loves dogs; beyond featuring them on the cover of Stick Season, references to dogs (or dog-like behavior) in his songs are very common
. - Dogged Nice Guy: The protagonist of "She Calls Me Back" sings of a woman he loves, but the lyrics as the songs go on imply that she doesn't exactly return the sentiment. The lyrics of Kacey Musgraves' verse in a later version of the song reveal that they may have once been close but she now rarely thinks of him.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Pretty frequently, most notably in "Stick Season" and "Dial Drunk" (where he refers to alcohol as his "medicine"). Also present in "Bad Luck" and "Growing Sideways".
- Drunk Driver: "Orange Juice" is about a drunk driver who survived a fatal car accident getting sober and returning to their hometown.
- Freudian Couch: Alluded to in "Growing Sideways", when the singer references how he "poured my trauma out on some sad-eyed middle-aged man's overpriced new leather couch".
- Generational Trauma: "Stick Season" and "Growing Sideways" make allusions to the singer inheriting trauma or struggles from their parents.
- Genre Shift: While folky singer-songwriter construction was always a part of Kahan's music, his pre-Stick Season discography was decidedly more poppy, with more upbeat electronic production than what is present on his later, more popular releases.
- Hated Hometown: Ultimately averted; Kahan's feelings towards his hometown throughout Stick Season are decidely mixed, frequently focusing on its smallness, but the album's conclusion in "The View Between Villages" ultimately expresses his fond memories of his hometown and its people.
- A Hero to His Hometown: "Homesick" alludes to an Olympic gold medalist from many years passed who is all but forgotten outside the singer's hometown but is still venerated there.
- Hollywood New England: Averted. The lifelong resident of Vermont writes extensively about the more mundane aspects of life in New England's small towns, with details of the local geography (including the nearby states of New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts) littering his lyrics.
- Homesickness Hymn: Many of Kahan's songs, particularly on Stick Season, are about his mixed feelings of longing and resentment towards his home. "Homesick" is the most obvious of these, though the lyrics of the song lean more towards him being sick of his home rather than sick with longing for it.I would leave if I could only find a reason.
I'm mean because I grew up in New England.
I got dreams, but I can't make myself believe them.
Spend the rest of my life with what could have been
And I will die in the house that I grew up in.
I'm homesick. - Loving a Shadow: The singer in "Dial Drunk" points out that his reckless, self-destructive behavior is done "in the name of someone I no longer know".
- Lyrical Dissonance:
- "Dial Drunk" is a pretty rollicking ode to drinking oneself to death.
- "Everywhere, Everything" is a sweepingly romantic song with a chorus about foreseeing the couple's rotting corpses Together in Death.
- One Phone Call: The protagonist in "Dial Drunk" uses their one phone call to call an ex while still drunk; the singer notes that "even the cops thought you were wrong for hanging up".
- Small Town Boredom:
- "New Perspective" has the biting observation that the singer's town is so small that residents started calling an intersection "downtown" when it got a single Target supermarket. The song itself is about the singer longing for the return of a former love who managed to get out, making the already boring town feel even tinier to him than it was before.
- From "Homesick":
Two months since you got back; how have you been, and are you bored yet?
The weather ain't been bad if you're into masochistic bullshit,
And every photograph that's taken here is from the summer
Some guy won Olympic gold eight years ago, a distance runner
And that makes a lot of sense: This place is such great motivation
For anyone trying to move the fuck away from hibernation.- "Everywhere, Everything" points out one of the benefits of a small town: you know all of the routes, and thus where you can get away with speeding.
- Suddenly Shouting: Most of Kahan's songs are sung quite softly, which makes the yelled delivery on the final verse of "Your Needs, My Needs" (and its blaring electic guitar accompaniment) all the more surprising.
- Talking Down the Suicidal: The subject of "Call Your Mom", with the singer offering support and comfort to someone dealing with deep depression and considering ending their life.
- Title Track: Present on Busyhead and Stick Season, absent on I Was / I Am.
- Together in Death: The chorus of "Everywhere, Everything" has the singer profess, "I wanna love you 'til we're food for the worms to eat, 'til our fingers decompose, put my hand in yours."
