Noah Kahan

Noah Kahan, an American singer and songwriter known for his distinctively warm, light vocal rasp, crafts folk-infused pop comparable to the styles of Ben Howard and Vance Joy. His 2017 debut single “Young Blood” spread rapidly online, after which “Hurt Somebody,” taken from the 2018 EP of the same name, entered charts in Australia and New Zealand. Kahan issued his first full-length album, Busyhead, in 2019, then followed it with I Was/I Am in 2021 and Stick Season in 2022; the last of these climbed to number two on the Billboard 200 and brought him a Grammy nomination. Before 2024 closed, he put out multiple related projects, among them deluxe editions, a live LP, and a duets collection.

Kahan entered the world in 1997 and grew up on a tree farm in rural Strafford, Vermont. He began composing songs at age eight, and while still attending high school he and his friends started producing and posting some of his material on the internet. After producer Joel Little, whose credits include Lorde and Taylor Swift, noticed the work and proposed a collaboration, Kahan joined Republic Records at twenty.

The label rolled out several singles across 2017, starting with “Young Blood,” whose viral momentum generated tens of millions of streams. By the latter part of that year he was opening for the Strumbellas on tour. The EP Hurt Somebody appeared in January 2018 and included Julia Michaels on the title track; “Hurt Somebody” reached number 13 in the Netherlands and number 14 in Australia. That February Kahan made his first late-night television appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, then spent the balance of the year supporting George Ezra and mounting his own initial headlining runs across North America and Europe.

Working again with Little, he tracked his debut album Busyhead in New Zealand; led by the single “False Confidence,” the record came out in June 2019. A year later he released the EP Cape Elizabeth and the collaborative single “Pride” with mxmtoon. In September 2021 he delivered his second album, I Was/I Am, again produced by Little and featuring the Joy Oladokun duet “Someone Like You.” His third LP, Stick Season, arrived in October 2022 and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200, with its title track reaching number 13 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. Throughout 2023 he issued several non-album singles, among them a cover of Jason Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires” with Wesley Schultz of the Lumineers and a piano version of the Stick Season cut “Orange Juice.” He also teamed with Zach Bryan on “Sarah’s Place,” which climbed to number 14 on the Hot 100. By year’s end additional collaborations with Hozier, Kacey Musgraves, and Gracie Abrams had appeared, and he 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)—surfaced in June 2023 and February 2024; the latter incorporated many of those joint tracks plus the new single “Forever.” Another related set, Live from Fenway Park, which introduced the previously unreleased song “Pain Is Cold Water” and featured Gracie Abrams, followed in August 2024 and entered the Top 100 album charts in the United States, Canada, and Ireland. Eight recent duets were gathered on the November 2024 Record Store Day release Town Hall (Stick Season Collaborations), which added Post Malone, Sam Fender, and Brandi Carlile to the roster and produced yet another Billboard 200 entry for Kahan.