Analyzing Noah Kahan Songs

     

    Alright, I think it is time that I finally attempt the blog post I’ve been thinking about doing since first semester. In this blog I will be discussing the lyrical meaning behind a few of Noah Kahan’s songs. At first I didn’t think I knew enough to actually come up with good analysis, but I think I am now finally ready to do my favorite of his songs some justice.

For this analysis I will be looking at Young Blood, Come Over, and All My Love. Just because I think all of their meanings are fairly interesting. I hope you all will enjoy this blog!

Young Blood:

Possibly my favorite Noah Kahan song. This song is a part of his album Busyhead, so I am doing it first so that the rest of this blog can be dedicated to unpacking Stick Season. I think the title alone gives away the major point of this song. ‘Young Blood’ typically serves as a reference to a young inexperienced person. I believe the song attempts to address the young person and give them advice. Perhaps it is Kahan talking to his past self. I think the most interesting part of this though is the advice he gives to his young self. It is, admittedly, bad advice. 

“Keep your time, keep your mind, keep humble / Start your life in the middle of the jungle.” This isn’t particularly good or helpful advice. “Start your life in the middle of the jungle” is almost telling the listener to move away from their world, which is sort of a bad plan when you're young, without many connections. “Keep your mind” and “Keep humble,” I suppose is better advice, so I feel as though he is trying to mix good advice with bad advice. Also, there is the line  “Rub your eyes, be surprised, keep hungry / Stay alive, try to lose all of your money.” Which is also very bad advice. But it is still delivered in a way that makes it sound inspiring and exciting. 

I think ultimately, what this song is trying to say, with references to beginning lyrics, “Oh dear, oh dear, I'm sorry / That you grew up so soon / A cold year and no high school parties,” is ‘Hold on to your innocence.’ Kahan is saying ‘you grew up too soon,’ so ‘you deserve to be young again.’ That is why he is suggesting to the listener all these bad ideas. A part of being young is being allowed to make bad decisions and being able to learn from them. So I think that the song works as encouragement to just let yourself be free for a little bit, ‘be young’.

Come Over:

Come Over is a song on Stick Season. For a while it was my favorite song on the album, but I don’t know if that still holds up. I still really like it though, and throughout all the times now that I have heard it, I think I am able to create an interpretation of the meaning behind it.

For a while I thought this song was directed to a lover, but I now think this idea is false. I think there is a large chance this song was written to/about a sibling. For one, the song focuses on a house, more specifically the house Noah Kahan grew up in. The symbol of a house would not serve as well with the idea of a teenage lover, as much as it would with the person you grew up with inside that house. Also, the first lyric, “I'm in the business of losing your interest / And I turn a profit each time that we speak,” is the exact kind of relationship you may have with a sibling who left you behind. Either younger or older, the idea of someone you're talking to losing their interest whenever you speak is too brutal to come from anybody besides someone you're closely related to. 

Also, Kahan, throughout the song references being at the house. The vibe throughout feels as though he is currently at the house, alone, and is trying to flag down his sibling who grew up there with him. The chorus and the title is “Come Over,” because he is begging his sibling to join him at the house. But at some point in their life they drifted and the sibling now seems uninterested in coming home to see Kahan.

Finally, I think the sibling referenced in the song is actually the younger sibling. This comes from the line, “I know that it ain't much, I know that it ain't cool / Oh, you don't have to tell the other kids at school.” You can hear this line and envision an older person telling it to a younger person. Kahan is offering advice to his younger sibling who is having trouble accepting the place where they currently are. 

All in all, in my interpretation, Kahan attempts to retell his childhood, in the form of an invitation to his younger sibling, who has gone off in their own life, and has no interest in returning to the home they grew up in.

All My Love:

This song I think is the easiest to unpack. The song is directed towards a former lover. More specifically, his first love. I think that the young love this song portrays attributes to the fact it’s one of Kahan’s more ‘pop-ey’ and innocent songs on Stick Season.

The reason I think that this song is most likely directed to a first love, comes from this lyric: “Well, I leaned in for a kiss thirty feet from where your parents slept / And I look so confident, babe, I swear, I was scared to death / My hands gripped the wheel, I smiled stupid the whole way home.” The level of nerves he describes makes it seem that he was trying out uncharted territory which is why I assume he is speaking of a first love.

I also think that Kahan and the subject of the song had a long relationship, and were very close. Despite that they also had something along the lines of a messy separation. That is why the deeper mood of the song could be seen as serious, Noah Kahan is attempting to reassure his former lover that although they may not really know each other anymore, there is no bad blood, and he sends all his love. 

“Now I know your name, but not who you are / It's all okay / There ain't a drop of bad blood, it's all my love.”

Final Thoughts:

Something I find most interesting about Stick Season is the way many songs appear to have around the same message. Many of them are about being left behind/stuck in his hometown, (Homesick, You’re Gonna Go Far, View Between Villages, Come Over, Paul Revere, Come Over?, Stick Season, Still, New Perspective, Northern Attitude,), many discuss a lover that left him behind, (Still, Your Needs,My Needs, Strawberry Wine, She Calls Me Back, All My Love, Everywhere,Everything, Halloween, Dial Drunk), some discuss harsher subjects like addiction and mental health + recovery, (Orange Juice, Call Your Mom, No Complaints, Still, Dial Drunk, Growing Sideways,). I guess albums are supposed to have themes throughout them, but I do really like being able to easily track them through listening through his album so many times. Anyways, Noah Kahan is a great artist, and if you're ever looking into listening to some of his songs, I suggest you do it!

-Miranda