Messed!Up
Born in 1997, Noah Kahan was raised in rural Strafford, Vermont, where his family owned a tree farm. He first started writing songs at the age of eight and was still in high school when he and his friends began producing and uploading some of his work online. After coming to the attention of producer Joel Little (Lorde, Taylor Swift), who offered to collaborate, Kahan signed with Republic Records at the age of 20.
The label released a series of singles throughout 2017 beginning with “Young Blood,” which went viral, collecting tens of millions of streams. By the second half of the year, he was touring in support of the Strumbellas. The EP Hurt Somebody arrived in January 2018 and featured singer Julia Michaels on the title track. “Hurt Somebody” charted in several countries, reaching number 13 in the Netherlands and 14 in Australia. Kahan made his late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that February and spent the rest of the year touring in support of George Ezra and completing his first headlining tours of North America and Europe.
WithLittle producing, Kahan recorded his debut album, Busyhead, in New Zealand. Led by the single “False Confidence,” the record was released in June 2019. He followed it a year later with another EP, Cape Elizabeth, and “Pride,” a collaborative single with mxmtoon. In September 2021, he returned with his sophomore full-length, I Was/I Am, which again found him working with producer Little. Featured on the album was the song “Someone Like You,” a collaboration with Joy Oladokun. Kahan’s third LP, Stick Season, arrived in October 2022. Inspired by his New England roots and musical inspirations like Paul Simon and Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), it reached number two on the Billboard 200. Included on the album was the title track, which hit number 13 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. Several non-album singles arrived in 2023, including a cover of Jason Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires” (featuring the Lumineers’ Wesley Shultz) and a piano version of the Stick Season track “Orange Juice.” He also paired with Zach Bryan for “Sarah’s Place,” which hit number 14 on the Hot 100.
By the end of the year, he had released additional collaborations with Hozier, Kacey Musgraves, and Gracie Abrams and earned a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. Two expanded editions of his third album, Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever) and Stick Season (Forever), were released in June 2023 and February 2024, respectively; the latter featured many of these collaborations along with a new single, “Forever.” Another related album, Live from Fenway Park, featuring the unreleased song “Pain Is Cold Water” and an appearance from Gracie Abrams, followed in August 2024; it cracked the Top 100 of the album charts in the U.S., Canada, and Ireland. Eight recent duets in all were then collected on the November 2024 Record Store Day release Town Hall (Stick Season Collaborations), which included appearances by Post Malone, Sam Fender, and Brandi Carlile and resulted in another appearance on the Billboard 200 for Kahan. In the meantime, livestreams of his stadium shows helped raise millions of dollars for Kahan’s mental health initiative, The Busyhead Project, aimed at fighting stigma and expanding access to mental healthcare.
2025 saw him back in the studio alongside prior collaborators Gabe Simon and Aaron Dessner to start work on his fourth record. Led by a title track that went to number one in Ireland, number two in Canada, and number six on the U.S. Hot 100, the resulting The Great Divide arrived on Republic/Island/Mercury today. Its release was followed by a months-long tour of baseball parks and sports arenas, including Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena, Germany’s Olympiahalle, California’s Rose Bowl, and a four-night return to Fenway.
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Noah Kahan pages
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Noah Kahan: ‘The Great Divide’
