No, You’re Not Going to Find the “Noah Kahan Experience” In a Random Dude with a Beard and a Flannel
Ladies, we need to talk.
On your social media feed, there are people clad in Patagonia and driving out west in their 4Runners and Jeeps with Noah Kahn’s “You’re Gonna Go Far” blaring in the background. The scene is idyllic, and you look at the artist that helped create this vibe. You probably think he’s hot. A logical inference.
You think he’s so cool in his L.L Bean jackets that make him look like a chic lumberjack or a sexy fisherman.
Everything about him is effortlessly rugged. He has a beard, is pictured with not one but two German Shepards, a literal house in the background and that far-off look about him that hints at a troubled (but conquered) past. The perfect rugged northern man that your small-town girl brain thinks that she can never obtain. He’s connected to nature and says things like “I’ll love you when the ocean’s dry, I’ll love you when the rivers freeze,” I’m pregnant just thinking about it.
He’s everything you want, and most importantly he’s so different than the guys in your hometown. Maybe you can’t have him, but you could find someone like him.
At first glance, I would agree. However, upon further analysis of the “Stick Season” album I see him for what he truly is: the man who never left his small town. If you fall for the illusion, you’ve been had.
Let me get real with you on the guys who never left their hometown. Let’s begin with the similarities with our boy Noah.
Beard
Plays Guitar
Hung up on his ex
Drunk calls you
Awkwardly say hi to your mom in the grocery store, she doesn’t remember who he is.
Instagram feed is filled with moody pictures in the woods
Hates frat boys
These may be superficial to you, but the song lyrics are damning. Starting with “She Calls Me Back,” an entire four minutes of pining after a girl who left him years ago and who just now began to pick up his phone calls.
“I could be your sacrifice, but don’t you hold your head up high, for bullshit I do not have time,” and let’s not forget “This town’s the same as you left it,”
Personally, these two lyrics alone let me know that moving onto greener pastures was the right thing to do. I would sooner eat a pair of shoes rather than let some dude keep me from “holding my head up high” above his excuses for staying in Stafford, Vermont.
It gets worse with “Dial Drunk”, assuming this is in the same time frame as “She Calls Me Back” it gives the reason why she might have stopped calling back. He had a little too much fun getting hammered and is begging the cops to let him call his ex, “And my medicine is drownin' your perspective out. So I ain't takin' any fault,”
So, let’s say I’m the ex. He calls me intoxicated, yet is also not listening? Cool.
“I don't like that when they threw me in the car, I gave your name as my emergency phone call. Honey, it rang and rang. Even the cops thought you were wrong for hangin' up”
Sure man! Because rejection is somehow worse than being a belligerent drunk idiot. And it’s also somehow my fault you're spending the night in a jail cell?
The verdict is that Noah Kahan is the most talented case of a man who never left his small town. This man is a prime example of not needing to be the first guy to do it, just the best one. He made an entire discography based on this persona and it slaps. However, is this behavior tolerable when instead of a concert venue, you’re in the Circle K parking lot batting away the exhaust fumes from his car speeding off because his ex “Called him back,”?
Is it going to be cool when he sends you snaps late at night back-to-back attempting to guilt trip you for going to college two hours away from your hometown?
Will it be sexy when you can’t drive two hours back to and forth to your hometown every weekend and he keeps saying, “Your voice trailed off exactly as you passed the exit sign, kept on driving straight and left our future to the right,” over and over.
Do you want to come back to your dorm smelling like PBR and Newports?
Perhaps social media posts that state the ever-so cryptic “never let them know your next move,” immediately followed by the most recent pyramid scheme they brought into is enough to deter you from the fate of hometown relationships. Did Noah do this? No, but half the alumni of my local high school ended up making this career choice.
What do they have in common with Noah? They never left their hometown. What is the difference? They can’t write songs successfully enough about their life to leave the sphere of SoundCloud.
If you must seek out this path I can’t stop you. You can usually find Noah Kahan copy-cats at your local billiards bar or overpriced “local” cafes, you can’t miss them, but be warned.
The only thing that’s true about this illusion of the perfect down-to-earth rugged man, is the fact that there’s a random ex named Kacey dialing his number after months of no contact.
