I went to Noah Kahan's sold-out Petco Park concert Monday night carrying my own Great Divide. On one side: I genuinely like the guy. "Stick Season" is a monster. "Northern Attitude" is irresistible. "All My Love," "She Calls Me Back," "Dial Drunk" and now "Deny Deny Deny" all work on me despite whatever internal resistance I bring to the exercise. Kahan has a distinctive, powerful voice, a gift for choruses designed to be screamed communally, and fans who don't merely listen to his music. They seem to live inside it.
On the other side: Jesus Christ, man. Noah Kahan is sometimes exhausting. Did you see that Netflix documentary? He's perhaps the closest thing contemporary male pop has to Taylor Swift: diaristic, emotionally forensic, culturally omnipresent, surrounded by fans who know every syllable, and increasingly capable of charging astonishing prices because enormous numbers of people will pay them.
He's also built an artistic identity around the internal monologue most men of my Northeastern vintage were specifically trained to suppress. Kahan talks openly about anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, obsessive thoughts, insecurity and the complicated business of existing inside his own head. He created the Busyhead Project around mental-health awareness, and that openness clearly means something profound to a lot of people. The organization has raised millions for mental-health causes.
I understand that intellectually. Emotionally, I was raised in New Jersey. Our traditional therapeutic model involved telling someone you're "fine," refusing to elaborate, making an inappropriate joke, and carrying the resulting psychological damage around until either death or Thanksgiving.
So when Kahan starts talking about body dysmorphia, there is a primitive little Northeast voice in my skull saying: Buddy, have you considered simply hating yourself privately like the rest of us? This is not enlightened thinking. I know that.
And that, strangely enough, became part of what made Monday night's show interesting to me. Because watching tens of thousands of people fill Petco Park for songs about loneliness, inadequacy, family dysfunction, alcoholism, homesickness, medication, self-loathing and the emotional weather patterns of New England made me wonder whether the old Beatitude has finally arrived in pop culture.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Apparently they have. And they bought stadium tickets.
Kahan's ascent has been astonishing. He went from posting music online and wondering whether he'd ever sell out Madison Square Garden to becoming a two-time Grammy nominee whose Stick Season transformed him into a global folk-pop phenomenon. His 2026 The Great Divide Tour is now playing baseball and football stadiums across North America; Petco Park officially sold out. That scale creates its own absurdity.
Folk music is historically the language of porches, pubs, union halls and small rooms. Kahan has somehow engineered a version capable of filling Petco Park. And Petco is a fantastic place to watch that happen.
I've increasingly come to love concerts there. There is something inherently ridiculous and wonderful about converting a baseball stadium into a temporary cathedral for whatever artist happens to be occupying center field. Tens of thousands of strangers arrive independently, drink overpriced beverages, spend two hours screaming identical words at the same person, then disperse back into the city. It's secular ritual.
Monday's congregation was particularly devoted. From our seats, Lady SanDiegoVille and I watched Petco become a glowing organism. Fans had been handed synchronized light-up bracelets at the gates, turning the stadium bowl into an enormous moving light installation throughout the show. We got there too late to receive ours. Naturally.
Some guy nearby was also handing out little handmade friendship bracelets, the sort of Swiftian fan ritual that has apparently escaped containment and begun colonizing other concerts. He gave us a couple. They were cute. After trying it on and imaging myself to be a more emotionally enlightened version of me, I quickly gave them to a dad sitting with his daughter because I have an image to maintain.
The production itself was enormous without becoming sterile. The central visual language of The Great Divide was domestic Americana blown up to stadium scale: a house, a car, porches, rooftops, different performance areas and multiple stages that allowed Kahan to physically move through the stadium while moving through different emotional registers.
He opened on the main stage with "American Cars" and "Doors" before "All My Love" produced one of the first huge communal singalongs. Then came "Deny Deny Deny," which I loved.
Kahan's ascent has been astonishing. He went from posting music online and wondering whether he'd ever sell out Madison Square Garden to becoming a two-time Grammy nominee whose Stick Season transformed him into a global folk-pop phenomenon. His 2026 The Great Divide Tour is now playing baseball and football stadiums across North America; Petco Park officially sold out. That scale creates its own absurdity.
Folk music is historically the language of porches, pubs, union halls and small rooms. Kahan has somehow engineered a version capable of filling Petco Park. And Petco is a fantastic place to watch that happen.
I've increasingly come to love concerts there. There is something inherently ridiculous and wonderful about converting a baseball stadium into a temporary cathedral for whatever artist happens to be occupying center field. Tens of thousands of strangers arrive independently, drink overpriced beverages, spend two hours screaming identical words at the same person, then disperse back into the city. It's secular ritual.
Monday's congregation was particularly devoted. From our seats, Lady SanDiegoVille and I watched Petco become a glowing organism. Fans had been handed synchronized light-up bracelets at the gates, turning the stadium bowl into an enormous moving light installation throughout the show. We got there too late to receive ours. Naturally.
Some guy nearby was also handing out little handmade friendship bracelets, the sort of Swiftian fan ritual that has apparently escaped containment and begun colonizing other concerts. He gave us a couple. They were cute. After trying it on and imaging myself to be a more emotionally enlightened version of me, I quickly gave them to a dad sitting with his daughter because I have an image to maintain.
The production itself was enormous without becoming sterile. The central visual language of The Great Divide was domestic Americana blown up to stadium scale: a house, a car, porches, rooftops, different performance areas and multiple stages that allowed Kahan to physically move through the stadium while moving through different emotional registers.
He opened on the main stage with "American Cars" and "Doors" before "All My Love" produced one of the first huge communal singalongs. Then came "Deny Deny Deny," which I loved.
What Kahan does particularly well live is disguise vulnerability inside arrangements muscular enough to prevent the evening from collapsing beneath the weight of its own feelings. There are mandolins and acoustic guitars, yes, but this isn't some guy sadly strumming beside a fern.
The songs swell. Drums arrive. Electric guitars widen everything. Choruses become enormous. Even the quieter material seems engineered toward catharsis. That helps explain why his particular strain of sadness works in a stadium.
At smaller scale, some of Kahan's writing could risk feeling almost oppressively introspective. At Petco Park, hearing 40,000-plus people scream the same neuroses back at him turns private anguish into something strangely triumphant.
"She Calls Me Back," performed with opener Gigi Perez, was excellent. Perez's presence brought another vocal texture to a song already built for conversational tension. "Dial Drunk" absolutely ripped. Then came the sequence that ultimately broke whatever skepticism I had left.
"The View Between Villages." "Northern Attitude." "The Great Divide." "Orange Juice." "New Perspective." Kahan even adjusted the latter's lyrics for San Diego, changing the geographical punchline to make Petco Park the destination.
Cheap trick? Absolutely. Did everybody love it? Also absolutely.
"Northern Attitude" was one of those moments where criticism becomes temporarily pointless. I am from the Northeast. Kahan is from Vermont. We clearly emerged from radically different schools of emotional management, but the underlying regional language is familiar: cold weather, sarcasm, self-deprecation, stubbornness, geographical pride and the deeply ingrained suspicion that expressing affection too directly may constitute some form of weakness.
Excuse my version of a northern attitude. Kahan's is healthier. Mine is funnier at parties.
The Great Divide Tour itself feels like the logical culmination of what he has been building since Stick Season. The breakthrough album became a genuine cultural phenomenon, and his newest material expands the same emotional vocabulary into larger arrangements and bigger questions about adulthood, identity and what happens after you've achieved the thing you thought would fix you.
Apparently the answer is: you still have problems. You just discuss them in baseball stadiums.
Kahan has recently spoken extensively about body dysmorphia and self-image, including the strange contradiction of achieving enormous career success while remaining capable of waking up miserable inside your own skin. My immediate instinct is to mock this. And, obviously, I just did.
But there's another side to it that Monday night made difficult to dismiss. Look around that stadium. Look at how many people knew those songs. Look at teenagers singing beside their parents, men shouting lyrics they'd probably never say aloud conversationally, women crying and laughing simultaneously, couples holding each other, strangers swapping bracelets, and an entire baseball stadium lighting up together.
Maybe there's value in a musician articulating things other people can't. Maybe the fact that my generation was taught to bury everything wasn't necessarily evidence that we'd discovered the ideal psychological operating system.
The songs swell. Drums arrive. Electric guitars widen everything. Choruses become enormous. Even the quieter material seems engineered toward catharsis. That helps explain why his particular strain of sadness works in a stadium.
At smaller scale, some of Kahan's writing could risk feeling almost oppressively introspective. At Petco Park, hearing 40,000-plus people scream the same neuroses back at him turns private anguish into something strangely triumphant.
"She Calls Me Back," performed with opener Gigi Perez, was excellent. Perez's presence brought another vocal texture to a song already built for conversational tension. "Dial Drunk" absolutely ripped. Then came the sequence that ultimately broke whatever skepticism I had left.
"The View Between Villages." "Northern Attitude." "The Great Divide." "Orange Juice." "New Perspective." Kahan even adjusted the latter's lyrics for San Diego, changing the geographical punchline to make Petco Park the destination.
Cheap trick? Absolutely. Did everybody love it? Also absolutely.
"Northern Attitude" was one of those moments where criticism becomes temporarily pointless. I am from the Northeast. Kahan is from Vermont. We clearly emerged from radically different schools of emotional management, but the underlying regional language is familiar: cold weather, sarcasm, self-deprecation, stubbornness, geographical pride and the deeply ingrained suspicion that expressing affection too directly may constitute some form of weakness.
Excuse my version of a northern attitude. Kahan's is healthier. Mine is funnier at parties.
The Great Divide Tour itself feels like the logical culmination of what he has been building since Stick Season. The breakthrough album became a genuine cultural phenomenon, and his newest material expands the same emotional vocabulary into larger arrangements and bigger questions about adulthood, identity and what happens after you've achieved the thing you thought would fix you.
Apparently the answer is: you still have problems. You just discuss them in baseball stadiums.
Kahan has recently spoken extensively about body dysmorphia and self-image, including the strange contradiction of achieving enormous career success while remaining capable of waking up miserable inside your own skin. My immediate instinct is to mock this. And, obviously, I just did.
But there's another side to it that Monday night made difficult to dismiss. Look around that stadium. Look at how many people knew those songs. Look at teenagers singing beside their parents, men shouting lyrics they'd probably never say aloud conversationally, women crying and laughing simultaneously, couples holding each other, strangers swapping bracelets, and an entire baseball stadium lighting up together.
Maybe there's value in a musician articulating things other people can't. Maybe the fact that my generation was taught to bury everything wasn't necessarily evidence that we'd discovered the ideal psychological operating system.
Annoying. I hate when concerts produce personal growth.
Then came the encore. "End of August." "Homesick." And finally the inevitable. "Stick Season."
Then came the encore. "End of August." "Homesick." And finally the inevitable. "Stick Season."
I fucking love "Stick Season." LOVE. IT. There. I've said it. Whatever resistance I maintain toward portions of Noah Kahan's persona evaporates the instant that guitar pattern starts.
Monday night's version stretched to roughly eight minutes, transforming his defining song into a massive closing celebration. By then, the entire stadium had become one voice.
There are songs you hear. There are songs you sing. And then occasionally there is a song that 40,000 people collectively detonate. This was one of those.
The fascinating thing about "Stick Season" is how structurally simple it is. The song feels almost conversational until the momentum accumulates and suddenly everybody is yelling about Vermont, failed relationships and emotional paralysis as though these are universal civic grievances.
Petco Park was deafening. And I was completely in. That's my Great Divide.
I can make fun of Kahan for being the patron saint of emotionally literate dudes in earth-tone clothing. I can roll my eyes at the therapy vocabulary. I can complain that concert tickets have become lunatic luxury purchases. I can make jokes about friendship bracelets and insist that people from New Jersey were raised to solve emotional problems through repression and deli meats.
And yet when "Northern Attitude" starts, I'm singing. When "Dial Drunk" hits, I'm singing. When "All My Love" arrives, I'm singing. And when Noah Kahan drags "Stick Season" out for eight glorious minutes while a sold-out Petco Park screams every word, apparently I'm one of these people too.
Maybe that's the uncomfortable beauty of popular music. You don't have to identify with the tribe to recognize the ritual. You don't have to buy everything an artist is selling emotionally to understand why everyone around you does. And sometimes your carefully cultivated cynicism simply gets overwhelmed by a great chorus.
Noah Kahan may indeed be the male Taylor Swift. He may occasionally make me want to grab him by his flannel collar and tell him everything is going to be okay whether he believes it or not. But the man can write a fucking song. He can sing the hell out of it.
And on Monday night in downtown San Diego, he made more than 40,000 people feel like their particular collection of fears, failures, hometown grudges and unresolved emotional debris belonged to something larger than themselves.
Even this emotionally constipated Northeasterner had to admit: That's pretty damn good.
Originally published on August 18, 2026.
Monday night's version stretched to roughly eight minutes, transforming his defining song into a massive closing celebration. By then, the entire stadium had become one voice.
There are songs you hear. There are songs you sing. And then occasionally there is a song that 40,000 people collectively detonate. This was one of those.
The fascinating thing about "Stick Season" is how structurally simple it is. The song feels almost conversational until the momentum accumulates and suddenly everybody is yelling about Vermont, failed relationships and emotional paralysis as though these are universal civic grievances.
Petco Park was deafening. And I was completely in. That's my Great Divide.
I can make fun of Kahan for being the patron saint of emotionally literate dudes in earth-tone clothing. I can roll my eyes at the therapy vocabulary. I can complain that concert tickets have become lunatic luxury purchases. I can make jokes about friendship bracelets and insist that people from New Jersey were raised to solve emotional problems through repression and deli meats.
And yet when "Northern Attitude" starts, I'm singing. When "Dial Drunk" hits, I'm singing. When "All My Love" arrives, I'm singing. And when Noah Kahan drags "Stick Season" out for eight glorious minutes while a sold-out Petco Park screams every word, apparently I'm one of these people too.
Maybe that's the uncomfortable beauty of popular music. You don't have to identify with the tribe to recognize the ritual. You don't have to buy everything an artist is selling emotionally to understand why everyone around you does. And sometimes your carefully cultivated cynicism simply gets overwhelmed by a great chorus.
Noah Kahan may indeed be the male Taylor Swift. He may occasionally make me want to grab him by his flannel collar and tell him everything is going to be okay whether he believes it or not. But the man can write a fucking song. He can sing the hell out of it.
And on Monday night in downtown San Diego, he made more than 40,000 people feel like their particular collection of fears, failures, hometown grudges and unresolved emotional debris belonged to something larger than themselves.
Even this emotionally constipated Northeasterner had to admit: That's pretty damn good.
Originally published on August 18, 2026.
