Noah Kahan, the folk singer who overturns the predictions on the Grammys

From outsider to revelation. The star of the Grammy Awards 2024whose delivery ceremony will take place on Sunday 4 February at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles (when it will be dawn on Monday in Italy), could be a folk singer-songwriter who, starting from New England, is conquering the charts around the world. The margins for a sensational coup by Noah Kahan in the category Best New Artist, “best debut artist”, among the most coveted of all of the “music Oscars”, increase day by day, in parallel with the successes on the platforms and in the charts of the 27-year-old singer-songwriter from Stafford, who this week he has two singles in the top 5 of the Official Charts Companythe official hit parade relating to the most listened to songs in the United Kingdom: it is in first place with the single “

Stick season” (which is sixth on the Billboard Hot 100, the official American chart) and fifth with the duet with Sam Fender “Homesick”. “I never got too far, because I think I prohibited myself from believing that it could happen,” he says, who has officially set the indicator to overtake the very favorites Victoria Monét and Ice Spice on the left.

In fact, the apprenticeship lasted much longer than expected for Noah Kahan: in 2016 he signed a contract with Republic Records and began working together with Joel Little, former right-hand man of Sam Smith, Tove Lo, Imagine Dragons, Shawn Mendes and Niall Horan , before finding himself stuck in the tunnel of self-beaming and endless opening acts for George Ezra, James Bay, Dean Lewis. The album “Stick season”, released in 2022, started quietly, before catapulting Noah Kahan into the “right circle” thanks to excellent songs between folk and pop like the title track (which counts half a billion streams on Spotify), the duet with Post Malone on “Dial drunk” (162 million plays on the streaming platform) and the one with Hozier on “Northern attitude”. He hit the mark with vulnerable lyrics and unfiltered honesty: he mostly sings about his roots and pays homage to his musical myths, from Paul Simon to Cat Stevens, trying to vividly represent his authenticity and genuineness with his songs.

In the era of dances on TikTok and songs that become such thanks to often zany ideas, there is also room for stories like that of Noah Kahan. In the fall the singer-songwriter was named to the TIME100 Next list. He also received two nominations at the Billboard Music Awards for “Top Rock Artist” and “Top Rock Album” and a nomination at the People’s Choice Awards for “Best New Artist”. Post Malone called him “a one-of-a-kind artist” And in December he also made his debut on Saturday Night Live, the most followed TV show in the USA, playing “Dial drunk” and “Stick season” itself live: “I wrote ‘Stick season’ without knowing that it would become, in my opinion, the most important song of my career.

It allowed me to finally transition into the songwriting style I’ve loved my whole life. And the moment I finished writing it I felt a level of comfort and honesty that I hadn’t felt since I began my journey in music. Being able to tell a story and being able to relate to my home in New England in such an honest way made me believe in myself again,” she says.

In “Stick season” the artist talks about traps and a sense of abandonment: “It’s about seeing the other side of a place that you thought was only beautiful. When a relationship ends, a place or person you looked at so fondly quickly turns into a painful memory. The beauty of fall foliage in Vermont transforms into a brown and gray desert awaiting the first snow. It’s an unfortunate but necessary transition, similar in many ways to going from familiar lovers to heartbroken strangers.” Practically the manifest which perfectly describes this moment in the singer-songwriter’s career: “I like to see the song as a hope: winter will come, snow will fall, it will melt and eventually summer will return in all its beauty. You will suffer, move on and survive again. The last verse of the song, ‘now you’re tire tracks, and one pair of shoes, and I’m split in half, but that’ll have to do’ speaks of the acknowledgment of the end, of the inventory of pieces left behind and acceptance of the future.” Noah Kahan’s could be sensational.