It started years ago when a friend texted me “Stick Season”. “This is the perfect fall song,” he said.
I listened to it. It was fine. I wanted to like it – it had that stripped down dude with a guitar sound I like. But it didn’t really do anything for me. I tried and couldn’t hear anything distinctive about it.
Then I noticed that other people seemed to really like “Stick Season”. It was on playlists. I decided to try again.
Nope, same response: no real pulse. It didn’t really feel like it was a song about anything or for anyone. No yearning, no rawness, no message. It’s just that time of the year again – the equivalent of a song about the (literal) weather. It was fine, as a song. Inoffensive. But entirely forgettable, except that everyone but me got excited over it.
There was a profile on Noah Kahan in the New Yorker. He was selling out shows, and even he seemed surprised by it. I read the article and I liked him well enough, as a guy. I just still didn’t get the hype, although I did feel happy for him. Apparently there’s a real audience out there craving his kind of small town New England barfly, plaid-infused music.
Fast forward some years and I got crabby when I saw his name pop up on my music podcasts. I don’t want to hear his latest whatever, I thought. And when I saw his face pop up last weekend on Netflix, I decided I do not like him.
It’s a reaction. I’m being unfair, because he’s successful and therefore in many ways overhyped. It’s not Noah Kahan the person I dislike (I don’t know the guy), it’s the Noah Kahan machine – the gross capitalistic commodification of what actually started as sincere, which was enthusiasm for Kahan’s music. “Stick Season”, in retrospect, seems about as real as it gets. An offhand comment describing that time in the late fall after the leaves have fallen but before the snow comes. And, sure, if you want to go deeper maybe also a liminal time in life that kind of feels like kicking at the dirt outside of the hometown bar, wondering if this is just a season or something longer.
Maybe I missed it all along. I knew I might have, and that’s fine – not all music is for me. But now, seeing that kernel of authenticity snowballed into the algorithmic machine meant to reinforce and sculpt my tastes and therefore where and how I spend my money? He was on the promo tour: the interviews, the podcasts, and the Netflix whatever. He was all over, and the expectation seemed to be that I would hit “accept”.
My instinctive and emphatic reaction was maybe a tad disproportionate to the dude himself. I clicked away in disgust, and texted a friend: “I don’t like Noah Kahan. His music is not nearly as good as the hype.”
“That is a valid take. I will co-sign.” the friend texted back.
Finally, I thought. Someone else.