{"id":6583,"date":"2026-05-10T16:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T21:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6583"},"modified":"2026-05-10T17:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T22:03:08","slug":"noah-kahan-the-impact-of-the-music-i-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6583","title":{"rendered":"Noah Kahan \u2014 The Impact Of The Music I Made"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI describe this album as like I\u2019m in the shower and I\u2019m half yelling at the showerhead and pretending it\u2019s whoever I want to talk to and taking responsibility or throwing blame, like those conversations that you wish you could have with people but have never been able to,\u201d Noah Kahan tells Apple Music of his fourth album The Great Divide.<\/p>\n

Underneath Kahan\u2019s trademark folksy veneer lies an urgent, high-stakes reckoning. Following the breakthrough success of 2022\u2019s Stick Season, the Vermont-native singer-songwriter was left to assess the impact\u2014not just on himself, but on those closest to him. \u201cMy life hasn\u2019t just gone away and the impact of the music I made and the person I\u2019ve become doesn\u2019t just escape from these people just because they haven\u2019t been living out on the road with me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

With longtime producer Gabe Simon and a few new collaborators in tow, including Aaron Dessner (\u201cI felt very lost and I kind of just like trauma-dumped on him and he took it so well,\u201d Kahan says) and pop whisperer Amy Allen (who\u2019s written for the likes of Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo), Kahan weaves through the highs and lows of returning home again.<\/p>\n

Kahan also marks a big distinction between his last album and this one, mirroring his own growth. \u201cStick Season is like doing shrooms and thinking you understand the entire world, and The Great Divide is like three months later: \u2018That was great and that was helpful, but there\u2019s a lot more we gotta figure out still,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cHe\u2019ll do some shrooms with you, but he\u2019s not going to pretend like it\u2019s going to change his life. He\u2019s not going to become a kayak guide somewhere. He has to go to work in the morning.\u201d Below, Kahan takes us through four key tracks in his own words:<\/p>\n

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Stream Now! Image Courtesy Of Apple.<\/span><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cEnd of August\u201d
\n\u201cI wanted to create a scene that just felt like late summer in Vermont or in a small town where there\u2019s just that total quiet and you can almost hear music in the air. One thing that my family and I have in Vermont is, like, I walk through the woods and the woods are haunted, but not by mean spirits. We\u2019ve all individually said, \u2018Oh, I heard voices in the woods,\u2019 and when I was writing that, I wanted it to feel like what those voices would sing if you were just like walking through the woods or driving past the woods in Vermont.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c23\u201d
\n\u201cThe song itself is not based on a story of my life, but based on a lot of friendships I have with people who have family members who are struggling with addiction or who have siblings who they can\u2019t connect to. It\u2019s that feeling of \u2018I want you back, but I don\u2019t want this version of you back\u2019 and \u2018I want that moment when we were sitting over the car hood and you were showing me how the engine worked and everything was normal.\u2019 And so seeing who you are now betrays this version of you that I really want you to be in this memory I have of you. It\u2019s a little selfish, because it\u2019s like you\u2019re asking someone to change for you, but it\u2019s that kind of childlike innocent hope that someday we\u2019ll just be exactly where we were.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPorch Light\u201d
\n\u201cI always worried that my mom felt or my family felt like I wasn\u2019t myself anymore and that I was just some ghoul that would come in to extrapolate further success or further emotion for my own gain. The truth is my mom never felt that way. She always felt she always showed me love and showed me patience and understood the gravity of what I was going through. I wanted that hope to be in there, like, \u2018I\u2019ll leave the porch light on for you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDan\u201d
\n\u201cThere\u2019s a few lines in the album that I feel like speak to that present feeling of, like, you\u2019re already there. Like, heaven is a drink in the backyard. Like, where do we go when we die? I wouldn\u2019t mind if it was right here. I wouldn\u2019t mind if I was sitting by the fire with my buddy, or even lost in the woods, or even in a moment of, like, there\u2019s something scary happening but you\u2019re with this person and you\u2019re experiencing this together in the same exact way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Every product\/service is selected by editors. Products\/Services you buy through these links may earn “Streamapse Online Magazine” a commission or revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI describe this album as like I\u2019m in the shower and I\u2019m half yelling at the showerhead and pretending it\u2019s whoever I want to talk to and taking responsibility or throwing blame, like those conversations that you wish you could have with people but have never been able to,\u201d Noah Kahan tells Apple Music of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6586,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions\/6586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}