Noah Kahan’s viral rise from obscurity sparks confidence crisis

Noah Kahan spent nearly seven years on Mercury Records and Republic Records before Stick Season changed everything, and the aftershock was as psychological as it was commercial. The third studio album, released on October 14, 2022, moved him from a regional singer tied to northern New England into a national act, but the leap came so fast that it brought a new question with it: could he actually live inside the success he had earned?

The title track first spread on TikTok in the summer of 2022, then the album kept building after its release. By June 2023, the deluxe edition, We’ll All Be Here Forever, had pushed Stick Season to No. 3 on the Billboard 200. The remix of Dial Drunk featuring Post Malone gave Kahan his first Billboard Hot 100 hit, a milestone that confirmed he was no longer just a slow-burn folk-pop name but a mainstream commercial presence.

By late 2023, that momentum had become hard to miss. Coverage described Kahan as on the cusp of superstardom after a Saturday Night Live performance in January 2024 and a string of festival headline announcements that put him alongside established names such as Kacey Musgraves, Hozier, Gracie Abrams and Olivia Rodrigo. For an artist who had once been framed as a breakout from Vermont and northern New England, the scale of the billing marked a sharp break from obscurity.

The rise became even more visible on February 19, 2024, when Stick Season reached No. 1 on the U.K. Official Albums Chart and the title song also held No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart, giving Kahan a U.K. chart double. In the United States, the touring picture kept expanding into arenas and, later, stadium-scale dates in 2024 and 2026, evidence that the commercial demand had moved well beyond the intimate rooms where his earlier records lived.

That growth also sharpened the personal strain. Kahan has spoken publicly about anxiety, imposter syndrome, disordered eating and body dysmorphia, and he has tied those struggles to the pressure that arrived with fame and creative expectation. What looked like a clean breakout from the outside carried a more complicated reality inside it: the faster Stick Season climbed, the more Kahan had to confront whether his identity could keep pace with the machine built around him.