Gearing up for a new chapter, singer and songwriter Noah Kahan unveils his new single entitled “Northern Attitude”. It heralds the arrival of his highly anticipated third full-length album, Stick Season.
Noah initially teased “Northern Attitude” on TikTok, and the clip has impressively generated over 1.1 million views and nearly 200 thousand “likes.” In the process, it dramatically increased anticipation for the song’s official release. On the track, sparse guitar rings out between pensive, plainspoken, and powerful verses. As the emotion builds, Noah sings, “If I get too close, and I’m not how you hoped. Forgive my northern attitude. Oh, I was raised in the cold.”
Noah says, “This song wasn’t supposed to exist. I was about to track guitar for another song on the album and had started fiddling around with a riff I made up in the moment. I had taken 2 edibles, so I wasn’t sure if I was just high and feeling myself, but it sounded really fucking cool. My co-producer Gabe thought so too, and told the engineer, Konrad Snyder, to start recording. Gabe sat down with a 12 string and plucked some melodies over the riff, and I began to sing. The lyrics I sang came from a place of total creative freedom, and I did not think they meant anything at all at first. It just felt fun to freestyle in a world class studio in my home state. We played it over 2 or 3 times on the microphone and walked into the control room to listen. It wasn’t until I listened to the lyrics that I had vomited out of my brain that I realized I had been trying to write them for years.”
He continues, “I was singing about isolation, about loneliness, about trying to assess who you are and where your life is going, and about accepting that and opening yourself up to love either way. Vermont has the second smallest population in the United States, and the second most rural population too. By definition, it is one of the loneliest places to live in the world. I felt that infinite loneliness in the years I spent living there after I graduated high school. I watched as my friends felt it and as my parents and family felt it too. I wanted to write a song about that loneliness, and what it means to the way we exist and the way we approach relationships. All that time in solitude can bring about clarity in oneself, and I believe this song is an exploration of that self-realization. Thank you to those who supported this tune from the beginning and a warm embrace to my fellow humans raised on little light.”
“Northern Attitude” lands in the wake of the album’s title track and first single “Stick Season,” which soared to #1 on the Spotify Viral Songs Chart in addition to becoming “the greatest gainer” on both the Spotify US Daily Top 50 and Spotify US Daily Top 200 charts. At radio, it impacted as “the most added at AAA,” currently sitting in the Top 20. “Stick Season” earned key playlist placements on Spotify and has racked up over 29 million streams on the platform to date. Not to mention, it inspired support and covers from the likes of Zach Bryan, Chelsea Cutler, Maisie Peters, Madeline The Person, and many others, and The Atlantic praised the song for being “wonderfully woodsy”.
Last month, Noah graced the stage of the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, supporting Amos Lee. The crowd sang along to “Stick Season” with undeniable enthusiasm. Not to mention, he recently took the mound to throw the first pitch at a Cleveland Guardians game.
This new sonic chapter arrives on the heels of Noah’s 2021 sophomore album I Was / I Am, featuring fan favorite single “Someone Like You” feat. Joy Oladokun. Following the album release and Fall 2021 “I Was / I Am Tour,” Noah continued to write and record, unlocking a new level of himself as an artist and songwriter with “Stick Season” and forthcoming new music. Rife with fluttering guitar melodies, inviting vocals, and homey imagery of the Northeast on the verge of a change of seasons, the song represents another massive turning point for him. Noah first tested out “Stick Season” live on tour last year to a rousing response, and a fan’s video of the moment circulated quickly online. After performing the song live on social media, his fans reacted immediately and followers relentlessly commented about releasing the song. In an instant, Kahan’s relationship with his career was altered, his conviction for storytelling and a pursuit of a more organic sound that aligned with the folk music of his upbringing had firmly arrived.
This fall, Noah will embark on his “Stick Season Tour” across North America, with buzzing gold-certified Nashville singer/songwriter Stephen Sanchez as support. Kicking off in Charleston on October 12th and running through November, the tour is nearly sold out and includes a show at New York’s Pier 17 and four hometown shows at South Burlington’s Higher Ground Ballroom.
As Noah Kahan changes, he casts those experiences onto songs like light through a film projector. At the core of the music’s upbeat energy and unfiltered lyrics, you’ll hear who he was before and who he became—almost in real-time. The Vermont singer still pens songs straight from the heart and still cracks jokes with his signature, self-deprecating sense of humor; he’s just changed in all of the right ways (and chronicled them via his songwriting). He gained that understanding through quite the journey from small town Vermont to global renown. He’s racked up over one billion streams, released two full length albums (Busyhead, 2019 and I Was / I Am, 2021) and a mid-pandemic EP (Cape Elizabeth, 2020), picked up a Gold Certification for “Hurt Somebody” feat. Julia Michaels, and performed on television shows such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and TODAY. Not to mention, he’s collaborated with everyone from Joy Oladokun to Chelsea Cutler to mxmtoon to Quinn XCII to Gryffin. After 5 years of critical acclaim and global touring, he sought an even purer style of writing and arrangement, a challenge from within to convey a vivid representation of what he loves, fears, and struggles with most passionately. Now, Noah continues to progress on his 2022 singles “Stick Season” and “Northern Attitude,” taken from his highly anticipated new album Stick Season out October 14th.
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