If you’ve been on the internet at all in the past year, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Noah Kahan. His third and newest album, Stick Season, recently blew up and took the world by storm. The songs are filled with melancholy feelings of home and love and references to mental health. Kahan comes from Strafford, a small town in Vermont, and his experiences there contribute greatly to his songwriting. Many of his songs talk about his inability to make it out of the small town. However, since Stick Season has made such waves, he has been able to tour the United States and Europe. He has also had the opportunity to collaborate with other popular artists such as Lizzy McAlpine and Zach Bryan.
So, what caused Kahan’s music to rise in popularity? Kahan has been writing for years, but he hadn’t found much luck when it came to his music charting. The name Noah Kahan didn’t mean much to most people until about three years ago. It all stemmed from a 2020 TikTok trend where users would lip-sync to lyrics from one of his songs: “Homesick”. This viral trend created quite a bit of hype for the album, but Kahan and his music still remained somewhat underground. When Stick Season was officially released, it quickly went viral. I personally couldn’t scroll too far on my For You Page without hearing the title track. Eventually, I was compelled to give it a listen, and I could see exactly why it was popular. It had simple melodies, yet complex lyrics that were incredibly relatable. Stick Season was a textbook folk album, and it helped bring folk music back into popularity.
Folk music has been slowly but surely making a comeback for quite a while now, but Kahan truly set the resurgence over the edge. Bands like The Lumineers and Rainbow Kitten Surprise have had several songs get popular in mainstream media. They laid the foundation for this resurgence, but Kahan is so incredibly popular it’s hard not to credit him with the popularization of folk music in media today. He became even more popular when he released the “We’ll All Be Here Forever” edition of the album with a classic folk sound, which is especially featured in its most popular track, “Dial Drunk.” He was able to create a majority classic folk album and from it, a folk music renaissance. The additional six songs further added to the narrative of the album and solidified Kahan’s mark on the folk music scene.
Kahan has made waves nationwide, but students at Florida State University (FSU) may have a deeper connection with the artist. This is because Kahan is coming to the FSU campus next month on Oct. 12. The upcoming concert is one of the only tour stops on a college campus. There is a buzz in the air among students, as it’s rare to have such a popular artist come to Tallahassee. If you’re interested in attending the concert, you’re in luck. While the general on-sale tickets are sold out, there are several resale tickets available on websites like SeatGeek and StubHub for reasonable prices. If you want to find out what the folk music phenomenon is all about, I’d highly recommend attending the concert. It’s going to be an experience you won’t forget.
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