Noah Kahan's "The Great Divide"

Noah Kahan is a contemporary folk singer, sharing mental health issues through his music. He aims it'll help others like him, and established a non-profit to help others like him. With his upcoming album The Great Divide, the title track voices his growth, and so will a Netflix documentary looking into his private life. Inspiring resilience just in time for spring's beginnings, I give my review of Noah's powerful impact.

Noah Kahan & Jelly Roll

"Stick Season"; "Dial Drunk" (SNL, 2023)

"The Great Divide"
"Porch Light"
YouTube Channel

ACMs 2024: "Mountain with a View" & "Stick Season"; "Cowboys Cry Too" - Kelsea Ballerini

Noah Kahan on Nate Bargatze's Christmas Special (2024)

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Theme Song: "Gym Track (2026 Remix)", composed by Jessica Ann Catena

Transcript

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Every year when spring starts, I instantly feel relief. Coming out of the rough winter we just had, we all could use some enlightenment. A favorite activity I embrace in the season change is walking. I pick music or a podcast to hear, exercising about an hour or however long the timing is. If you're looking for something new to jumpstart spring 2026, I've got you covered this episode. Indie folk singer Noah Conson's inspiration to many, composing his own life struggles into songs resonated by fans. He's at least one artist innovating folk music's appeal to contemporary demographics and lyrical meanings. I'm Jess. Join my perspective in telling Noah's rise to fame and his current number one hit, The Great Divide. Coming next on Music Media Review. Just when you thought there couldn't be a fitting renewal sign, Noah Khan's birthday falls on New Year's Day. He was born January 1st, 1997, in Stratford, Vermont. Middle child among three siblings, Noah's musicality derives from his dad teaching him guitar and mom writing best-selling novels. Admiring Kat Stevens, The Counting Crows, Green Day, and Paul Simon, songwriting was a mechanism dealing with anxiety and depression so young. Nurtured by loving parents, Noah started going to therapy at eight and pursued a record deal in lieu of college 2017. He toyed around, released 2019 debut record Busyhead, then COVID's lockdown halted momentum. Crazy how everything diverts to that, exactly six years ago already. For Noah Khan, a breakout anthem wrote itself and gained traction on TikTok. Adding to compositions posted on his SoundCloud and YouTube pages, acoustic excerpts of Stick Season triggered empathy and a relatable anthem, Feeling Stuck. Finalized in 2022, I was at work when Stick Season first played on a local adult alternative station at my office. Two things catching my attention were the fast vocal tempo and Vermont shouted out in the chorus. At the time, my roommate's parents decided to permanently move to their ski home in Vermont where she and her dad are seasonal ski instructors every winter. I vacationed the area before I was starting college. It's really beautiful up there. All these similarities crossed wild timing. Stick seasons chorus says, and I love Vermont, but it's the season of the six. And I saw your mom. She forgot that I existed. And it's half my fault, but I just like to play the victim. I'll drink alcohol till my friends come home for Christmas, and I'll dream each night of some version of you that I might not have, but I did not lose. Now you're tired tracks and one pair of shoes, and now I'm split in half, but that'll have to do. A friend of a friend once told me Noah Khan is all they listen to, and I completely get it. His honest candidness relates to others sorry for themselves and boldly attempting changes in the best way possible. Lockdown's universal aftermath expressed international infamy, dubbing Noah a folk star. Six Season's single Traveled Overseas became a number one pop song and a title track folk album remaining on top of Billboard's Americana Folk Albums chart. A year later in 2023, Six Season got re-released into a deluxe album featuring singers remixing a couple tracks. Post Malone on Dial Drunk, Hosier duetting Northern Attitude, Sam Fender doing homesick, excelling even stronger ties in the music industry. Other guests were KC Musgraves on She'll Call Me Back, Gracie Abrams with Everywhere Everything, Brandy Carlisle collaborating You're Gonna Go Far. Lizzie McAlpine singing Call Your Mom and Gregory Alan Isakoff closing Paul Revere. The Grammys gave a Best New Artist nomination to Noah. Fans voted him to win it at 2024's iHearp Radio Music Awards and Billboard Music Awards named Stick Season Top Rock Album. I find it very powerful how far this went, spinning folk music's point of view. Rather than lamenting Love, Lost, the Blues, we were having autobiographical redemptions by Noah Khan and another famous artist, Jelly Roll. Two men laying out truths and looking to fans making amends. Jelly Roll's music career veered from hip-hop to rock to country. Kelsey Ballerini recruited a bigger spotlight for Noah Kahn. He sang on her 2024 duet, Cowboys Cry 2. They performed a live mashup at 2024's ACM Awards, combining Kelsey's Mountain with the View with Six Season, segueing into Cowboys Cry 2. I loved it. So did viewers watching it live on Amazon Prime Video. It was up the following year for ACM and CMA Awards, Musical Event of the Year, and Grammy's Best Country Duo Group Performance category. Advocating mental health awareness, Noah's proud creating his own nonprofit. The Busy Head Project established 2023, supporting 170 organizations, and has raised$6.6 million. Included on his website's merch and tour schedule, the Busyhead Project's accessibility lists resources, a community wall to share personal thoughts, and a quoted testimonial by Noah Khan. I've been given so many wonderful opportunities in my career, and it really is all for nothing if I don't try and give back to the community that has supported me. If I can help anyone get through their struggles, it will be the proudest achievement of my career. Wondering what led to the Great Divides new release? A confident growth expanding more than an upcoming album. Music video was televised that weekend during a special primetime commercial break, The Grammys. MasterCard sponsored exclusive VIP tour tickets to see NoahCon this summer and announcing April 24th's album release date. I was emotionally moved by the Great Divides music video. It's my absolute favorite song by him. Noah is shown walking into a gas station store seeing teenage boys grabbing items. You realize as the scenes move on that those boys were a memory he had with his friends, resulting in a feud he had as a young adult with one of them. Pondering in his narration how things have been since that fight, Noah plays guitar in the back of a station wagon, singing the song. Ending concludes both men reuniting at the same convenience store parking lot, by chance, hugging it out. Noah sings crucial words of wisdom in the Great Divide, subconsciously controlling worry and leaving it for worse things that may happen. You know I think about you all the time and my deep understanding of your life and how bad it must have been for you back then and how hard it was to keep it all inside. I hope you settle down, I hope you marry Rich. I hope you're scared of only ordinary shit, like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin, and not your soul and what he might do with it. I've experienced falling out with friends, sometimes distance is best to resolve. Life has a funny way running into the past, reminding about certain things and people. Entering my late thirties, the clarity knowing what's best for me is a mindset I've healthily lived by. There's goals I effortlessly strive and just have to believe they'll happen the right moments. In some way, that's what's inspiring the Great Divide's album theme. The title is only sung in the second verse once. You winched yourself across the Great Divide while we drove aimlessly along the Twin State line. Geographically, that's Vermont and New Hampshire, where the Khan family has lived planning their roots. Noah told People magazine this song in particular is really about two people who grew up together but maybe didn't know each other as well as they thought. A lot of my life recently has been realizing the things I wish I could have said to people and the things I wish I could have done differently. And so this song is kind of just an expansion of that. For this album and for this song in particular, there's so many characters and so much narrative and complexity to the story that I wanted to find a way to bring the two worlds together. Such a big part of the writing process for me is honoring the stories. Within two months, the Great Divides title track has charted number 25 Adult Contemporary, Number 19 Adult Pop, Number Six on the Hop 100, Number 1 Alternative Airplay for 3 Weeks, and Adult Alternative Airplay for 1 Mont. Porchlights a second Great Divides single voicing Noah's mom, Lori, leaving the porch light on for him to come home safe when he was still living with them, but she'd always shut it because he didn't come back to do it himself. The stanza's repetitive lyrics symbolize her burdening, wishing Noah would have been well. Fortunately, prayers have been answered. Noah privately eloped last summer, his wife Brenna involved with the Busy Head Project's nonprofit, and is putting out a documentary soon. Out of Body screened March 16th at South by Southwest Film and TV Festival. Netflix will drop it a week before the Great Divide is available. Press release reads, My life was filmed for a year and a half. It was weird, difficult, and generally beautiful to experience. I'm excited for you guys to see it too. This documentary captures more than I ever thought the world would see about myself, my creative journey, and my family. I am nervous about it because it's personal and some things I touch on are painful to think about and be reminded of. I remember though that anything scary or hard is usually worth sharing with the world. Maybe it will reach one of you in a time when you need it. Maybe you'll see some of your own family in mine. Either way, I hope you love it. Noah Khan Out of Body out April 13th on Netflix. I'm looking forward to watching and hope that you, the listener, are just as inspired moving forward to greater things ahead. Email Music Media Review Podcast at gmail.com. Follow our social media to support and updates on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Please rate and review wherever you're streaming. I also want to thank Twisted Pulp magazine for publishing my video podcast article. I placed where you can purchase issue 45 on Amazon's online store. I'm Jess. Next episode will be our first countdown themed episode. I'll be curating a Miley Cyrus top 10, celebrating two accolades she has going on. You'll be surprised over the music turns I'll pick from her solo career. Talk to you then.