He's the first Gen-Z rock star.
Now what does that mean...
Traditionally, a rock star is someone on a pedestal, someone who you aspire to meet, someone better than you, an icon, a vaunted, untouchable genius.
That is not Noah Kahan. Noah Kahan is just like you and me. Well, to be more specific, he's just like the youngsters who grew up digitally native, who live in the world of social media as opposed to deplore it. They know they will never lose touch with anybody they've ever met. They know there is no place off the grid. And that nobody is any better than anybody else.
Don't mistake the hero worship of Olivia Rodrigo as a modern, Gen-Z paradigm. That's the same as it ever was. Find someone you can anoint, push them ad infinitum in the media, create a tsunami of energy that reaches as many people as possible and then put forth a stage show that is not radically different from the heyday of MTV. It's got to be slick, produced, because that's what the audience wants, right?
Well, maybe it doesn't.
Or maybe there's an audience for that but it's such a hard game to play. To the point where the major labels can't even break a new act.
And along comes Noah Kahan, who is DIFFERENT!
He doesn't look like his press photos, like his album covers. Noah Kahan is a dork sans charisma. And in truth very few people are cool, very few are magnetic, Gen-Z knows we are all in it together. So how do you stand out?
By being yourself. By looking inward. By owning your identity. By not trying to play the game, but inventing your own game.
Noah Kahan is selling radical honesty. When most acts are inherently dishonest. Their public persona is different from their private persona. There are layers of subterfuge, to make them exotic yet palatable to the masses.
Noah Kahan could come down from the stage and sit amongst the audience and there would be no brouhaha. No, scratch that, people would be excited, but my point is he's no different from you and me. And that's a radical change.
Which Gen-Z is wholly familiar with.
Call it influencer culture. Anybody can be a star. But you have to work for it. But that does not make you better than anybody else. It just makes you worthy of attention.
So Noah Kahan tried to play the game as proffered, but it didn't work. But when Covid hit and he started speaking his inner truth, it resonated.
People haven't been speaking their inner truth for decades.
Scratch that, the Spotify Top 50 is not based on inner truth. It's mostly cartoons. Let me tell you about my fabulous life, don't you wish you could hang with me? Hip-hop used to be the story of the streets, that was its draw, its power... But that was warped by expensive lifestyle videos in the late twentieth century, never mind abuse of women and the inclusion of old, offensive tropes that would not die.
As for pop music... It was even worse. It was always vain and vapid. That was its essence. Music blew up in the late sixties and seventies when there were two lanes, AM and FM. AM was for casual listeners, it was a big tent, the songs played to everyone, whereas FM was for those who cared, who were fans, who lived for the music, who ate up the words of acts that didn't even seem to care about them, who were focused mainly on themselves.
Do you have problems?
Well, if you're a man you're probably going to say no. And if you're white or wealthy you're not entitled to them. I mean think of all the starving people in Africa!
Everyone is told to buck up and soldier on. But then why are so many of the best and the brightest committing suicide? Life is not only financially hard, but it's emotionally hard.
Politics is unfathomable. You can't believe in Biden, and if you're attached to Trump you're delusional.
The corporations rip you off.
You feel alone.
So where do you go? MUSIC!
That was the tunes' traditional role. Not only an escape, but a soothing of the soul, an understanding. And that's got nothing to do with brand extensions. A perfume won't soothe your soul, it's external, not internal.
People hunger to be understood, to know someone else gets them, and that's the role Noah Kahan plays.
2
Now the first thing you'll notice is all the fans singing along. Like an extra voice. It's palpable, you can't ignore it. The first time I heard/saw this was with Taylor Swift in the first decade of this century. You see she was speaking to her generation, they needed to own her music, not as in physically own it, but emotionally own it. Someone was speaking to THEM! The anxieties of being fifteen. Of being awkward and uncool. That was her power.
Swift abdicated this role when she stopped writing with Liz Rose and went pop. The focus shifted, it became about world domination, external as opposed to internal.
But Noah Kahan is all internal. He's singing about his life. And he's not settling scores, he's revealing his anxieties, his depression... When he sings about living in Vermont with the same damn few people and nothing to do and being bored... I can identify with that, I've lived in Vermont, I've been where everybody knows your name, and it positively sucks.
And it's not entertainment Kahan is looking for. But something that speaks to his soul. The basic building blocks of life. We all want to be seen. I ask you, when you listen to the Spotify Top 50 do you feel seen? Only if you're someone with a track in the hit parade!
I could go through Noah's show song by song, but the interesting thing is either you're in or you're out, either you're a member of the tribe or you're irrelevant. This also is the modern paradigm. It's not about reaching everybody, but reaching those who care. If you do it right, there are enough who care to keep you alive.
And Kahan got lucky with "Stick Season." This is a classic story, someone down and out, on the edge, digs down deep and tells their personal truth, which they believe only relates to them, and then they find out it's universal.
Now there are acts that only guys go to see. Usually focused on playing, sometimes lyrics from science fiction. But everybody knows the real money comes when you get the girls, the women to attend.
And more than half of the audience was women Friday night. Not that there were no men. But women catch the lyrics first. You think that men lead, that they drive the culture, but it's almost always women. Because they're more sensitive, they're not constantly thinking about where they are on the totem pole.
Women want to marry someone like Noah Kahan. With foibles, who is willing to speak about their troubles and listen to theirs. Sure, a movie star hunk is appealing, a traditional rock star is appealing, but deep inside you know you're never going to fly on a private jet and when you get down to it, how much do you have in common?
Noah Kahan is solidly middle class. He didn't fight his way up from the bottom, and he didn't grow up so rich that he never had any worries.
He signed a record deal when he was eighteen, a dream, right?
Well, Kahan found himself alone in Los Angeles. Truly alone. Doing everything alone. Big man on paper, small man in real life. Have you ever been alone like this? I certainly have. Many people can't tolerate this, which is why they never leave home, never risk, it's just too daunting. But with no risk there's no reward. And in truth, Gen-Z is risking every day. Everybody is a unique individual with a presence online. And what do their elders tell them? Put down the phone! Which would be like telling the teens of yore they couldn't talk on the telephone. There's an emotional generation gap between oldsters and youngsters.
3
So Noah Kahan has a crack band. And he can play pretty well himself.
As for his voice... It ain't gonna win "American Idol" or "The Voice." But his voice is perfect for getting his message across. And that's what it's all about. Music is not a competition. If you're worried about Grammys you've got it wrong. You can't quantify what truly resonates with the public, and if you're successful, that does not mean someone else can't be, this is not a zero sum game.
But what we end up with is tracks written by committee and recorded and produced by the usual suspects. Everybody is trying to be just like everybody else. Which is a death spiral. That's why today's music rings so hollow. There's nothing there to see.
But what Noah Kahan is selling is different. You feel that he knows you. Or you know someone like him. He's not so distant, not in the stratosphere, but here on Earth like the rest of us, one of the teeming masses.
Which leaves one optimistic.
The passion Friday night was akin to the passion of the heyday fifty and sixty years ago. But with a twist. In that Noah Kahan might have been on stage, but there was no gulf between you and him.
And I could cite songs. Do a business analysis of how his duets with famous people enhanced his career. There was some game-playing involved. But it all comes down to that one song, previewed online during Covid, "Stick Season."
Which Kahan uploaded to TikTok, not because he was looking for virality, but because this is how Gen-Z communicates. And in truth it's very hard to manipulate TikTok, if it was easy, it would be dominated by major label priorities, and it's not.
"So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad
That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad"
All we hear from the oldsters is the young are overmedicated, that they need to get off the drugs and endure the ups and downs, they did.
Yeah, but how well did they do? And the world is a tougher place now. You've got the haves and have-nots, not everybody can afford a Rolex and a Mercedes-Benz.
"No, I am no longer funny 'cause I miss the way you laugh
You once called me forever now you still can't call me back"
They don't call you back. At least pre-Covid you might run into them at school. But now you're home, isolated, alone.
"Oh that'll have to do
My other half was you
I hope this pain's just passing through
But I doubt it"
He's resigned. Maybe there's a flicker of hope. If you haven't had this angst, when you were younger, when you endured your initial breakups, you married your first love or are alone and celibate. This is human nature. But all we've got is dancing queens speaking about fantasy lives.
That is not Noah Kahan.
4
Will we have more Noah Kahans?
We already do, but most are not musicians, they're excoriated online influencers. Sure, some are shilling products for cash, but the essence is honesty, real life, and you'd know that if you were on TikTok, but you're not, you're superior, you know all about it, but you've never experienced it. Maybe you should go on and see the forty and fiftysomethings talking about their dating experiences. People are strange, but now it's not Jim Morrison singing about them, but the hoi polloi testifying on social media.
The game is not hard, but it involves risk. And no one wants risk, everybody wants insurance, which is why so many Ivy League graduates go into finance.
And then in their spare time they listen to Noah Kahan. Because all they've got is their cash, their inner lives are empty, they need someone to speak to them.
You don't have to listen to Noah Kahan, not many more people need to listen to Noah Kahan, he's doing quite well, thank you.
And you might not even get it. Which is fine, when was it expected that everybody got everything?
And if you don't get it you're not a hater, you're just into something different.
But if you were at the show Friday night you'd know that something is happening here.
And it's exactly clear.
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