Year: 2024

Over his three decades as an NFL play-by-play man, Joe Buck has steadily found his voice and comfort in his own skin. But getting to that point was a process, as the son of legendary broadcaster Jack Buck, he wasn’t always sure of what tone he should take and how seriously he should take himself.

Now, he and Troy Aikman make up arguably the best broadcast booth in football for ESPN’s Monday Night Football, in large part because they strike the right balance of not taking themselves too seriously, but are still able to bring the right gravitas to a call in a big moment. It took Buck awhile to loosen up in the booth, and the all-time example of him being far too uptight is when he was paired with Cris Collinsworth for a Vikings-Packers playoff game in Green Bay and Randy Moss celebrated a touchdown by pretending to moon Packers fans.

Buck’s “that is a DISGUSTING act” call has lived on forever, and it’s the one he wishes he could take back. As he explained to Kevin Clark on This Is Football, that’s the easy answer for the thing he would do over in his career, citing how great Randy Moss has been to he and his wife and that he didn’t know the backstory of Packers fans mooning the Vikings team bus in the moment.

It’s one that Buck cringes at every time it plays back, as he can’t believe that came out of his mouth, but it certainly served as a bit of a learning experience for him. Once overly self-serious, Buck now happily pokes fun at himself and the banter between he and Aikman makes their broadcast among the best in the NFL, and that shift likely started after having to hear back his call of Moss’ celebration two decades ago.

Jay-Z continues to expand his extensive portfolio. Today (January 24), his latest collection for Moncler Genius, which arrives as a partnership between fashion house Moncler and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation brand launched through the official Moncler site and via select stores.

The Moncler X Roc Nation collection features large puffed jackets, sweaters, two-piece ensembles, streamlined vests, all of which contain an New York-inspired flair. Many of these fashions may require you to break the bank. The least expensive item in the collection is a t-shirt with the Moncler X Roc Nation logo, which goes for $345. The priciest item is the bomber jacket, which comes in at the tune of $2,405. But thankfully, there’s free shipping! All of the clothes were designed by Jay himself.

Perr Moncler’s website, Moncler X Roc Nation “symbolizes creativity without limits, pooling experience and ambition from shared yet vastly varied points of interest, for a collection that epitomizes the sentiment that genius is everywhere.”

The news arrives with a special trailer shared to Moncler’s social media channels. The trailer was produced by The McGloughlin Brothers, and is narrated by R&B artist Saint Jhn.

“We climb mountains over hard paths,” says Saint Jhn in the clip. “From hard places, climb above the noise to find your voice. Until there is only sky above you. Genius is everywhere.”

The Moncler X Roc Nation collection arrives lest than a year after Jay’s The Art Of All audio/visual experience, which he created with Moncler and revealed at last year’s London Fashion Week.

You can see a preview clip introducing Moncler X Roc Nation above.

Uproxx cover star Chlöe Bailey did a recent interview with People Magazine, where she discussed her sister Halle’s pregnancy and how they tried to hide it until she was ready to share her baby with the world. As Chlöe put it, it was the “best kept secret ever.”

“We just ignore it,” she shared. “I would tell her, like, take social media off your phone, you know, I keep all her other secrets. So this was just another one in the books.”

Chlöe herself is also “on cloud nine” about the fact that she’s now an aunt. Halle and her boyfriend, DDG, welcomed their son, Halo, which they revealed earlier this month through an Instagram post.

Both the sisters are still keeping busy. Chlöe performed at the Urban One Honors: Best In Black event. Halle is set to host a Masterclass that fans can livestream, which will be part of the festivities for Grammy Week. More information about that can be found here.

Chlöe also recently teased during a TikTok livestream that the two could be reuniting to put out some new music. Both sisters worked on their solo projects, with Chlöe dropping In Pieces, and Halle appearing as the lead in the live-action Little Mermaid.

Check out Halle Bailey and DDG’s announcement of Halo’s birth below.

The Milwaukee Bucks made a rather shocking move on Tuesday, firing first-year head coach Adrian Griffin after a 30-13 start to the season. Now, it wasn’t quite as stunning as that record would indicate, because there were plenty of underlying issues the Bucks were overcoming off sheer talent, namely a defense that had no definable principles or strengths.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, and Khris Middleton have led the Bucks to the East’s 2-seed at the midway point of the season, but of all the top contenders in the East, they seem like the team with the most obvious concerns come playoff time. There’s been a disconnect in the Bucks locker room since before camp, when Terry Stotts abruptly left the team due to disagreements with Griffin despite his strong relationship with Lillard. From there, the team had to demand a switch back to drop coverage with Brook Lopez, and Giannis recently called out the lack of a coherent scheme — and poor effort from the players.

Immediately after Griffin was fired, Doc Rivers’ name was floated as a top candidate for the job. Given the most successful coaches available in mid-January were Rivers, now doing TV work for ESPN, and Budenholzer, who the Bucks just fired, it wasn’t a surprise Rivers’ name would be attached.

On Tuesday night, CNN Sports broke the news that he’s on his way to Milwaukee.

While it seemed like they might have jumped the gun here, CNN stood by its reporting, even as other NBA reporters said things hadn’t progressed that far down the road yet. But on Wednesday morning, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report, and Shams Charania of The Athletic broke the news that Rivers is, indeed, on his way to Milwaukee.

Rivers has not enjoyed much in the way of postseason success since winning a title in 2008 with the Celtics, and that will of course be brought up by everyone when citing the Bucks’ goal of winning it all. That said, he will install some defensive principles and has a strong system on that end, which will be an upgrade from what they’ve been doing even factoring in their personnel limitations. Offensively, we’ll have to wait and see, as Rivers’ teams recently have had a tendency to get bogged down in the playoffs, but Lillard and Antetokounmpo represent a uniquely dynamic pairing that might be able to overcome those problems.

Now, somewhat interestingly, ESPN has to figure out what they’ll do with their lead broadcast team, as Rivers was paired with Doris Burke and Mike Breen. J.J. Redick and Richard Jefferson are the lead analysts for ESPN’s No. 2 team, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if Redick was elevated to that top group.

Ever since Drake’s breakout hit, “Best I Ever Had,” some hip-hop fans have found any reason they could to justify their hate for the Canadian hitmaker. From demeaning his upbringing and early career as a child actor to outdated and regressive homophobic attacks to Yasiin Bey’s pseudo-intellectual take, Drake haters will seemingly always find a reason for dumping on the For All The Dogs rapper.

But all those reasons are just a smokescreen for one, real reason — at least, according to Drake’s longtime mentor, benefactor, and frequent collaborator, Lil Wayne. The New Orleans icon offered an intriguing, “historical” explanation for people hating on Drake during a recent podcast interview which was surfaced by HipHopDX earlier this week. Appearing on The Richard Sherman Podcast (there are TOO MANY PODCASTS), Wayne gave his simple take for all the disrespect:

“He red, he light-skinned,” Wayne conjectured. “That’s just American history. How I know is, because I’m not light-skinned. I hated on all light-skinned dudes in school. So yeah, it’s American history, man.”

While I’m sure there’s more to it than that (at least, for some people), colorism has been a longstanding issue in the music industry. And just speaking for personal experience, there does appear to be a certain amount of resentment that manifests as mean-spirited “jokes” and well-worn stereotypes. But then again, it seems like everyone has to deal with some version of this, so maybe Drake’s status as a relatable superstar remains intact, after all.

Check out the video of the interview below.

Nearly twenty-five years have passed since arena-bound Gladiator star Russell Crowe shouted, “Are you not entertained?” Well, Ridley Scott plans on entertaining the original film’s audience (and hopefully, a few new generations, given the cast) with a sequel. Expectations are obviously running high, given that the original was both a box-office smash and an Academy Award success, taking home the Best Picture award with Russell Crowe picking up Best Actor. At the same time, the reality that a sequel is nearly upon us still feels surreal, given that Maximus didn’t make it out of the first film alive.

Ridley Scott, of course, recently finished up directing another historical epic, Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix, who happens to also have portrayed Emperor Commodus in the original Gladiator. That character also didn’t live to see another era of Ancient Rome, but the good news is that there’s a loaded cast for Gladiator 2, which has finished filming, according to the sequel’s star. Here’s what we know about the upcoming blockbuster film.

Plot

The events of Gladiator 2 have long been the stuff of legends and rumors, and at one point Nick Cave (yes, that Nick Cave) wrote a fantastical script (detailed by Collider) that would have bought Maximus back in the afterlife. And that wouldn’t have happened simply as a quick ghost cameo but as the main plot point after Maximus awakens in the Roman afterlife, which isn’t as idyllic as he imagined. On an even odder note, he would have been tasked with a long and winding odyssey back in Rome, where the fully-grown Emperor Lucius II would have been as god-awful as his Uncle Commodus.

(Fortunately, this did not happen ^^ even though it sounds like a fun movie to watch under the influence.)

In the actual remake from Ridley Scott, the story will pick up around two decades following the events of the first movie. The story follows Lucius II (Paul Mescal), the adult son of Roman empress Lucilla (the returning Connie Nielsen). In the time between the two films, according to Scott while speaking with Rotten Tomatoes, “He’s been in the wilderness” after having “lost touch with his mother.” When the story picks up, Lucilla believes that her son is dead, and boy, will she be surprised.

Filming has been completed, and is there a tiny chance that Crowe could do the ghost thing in this sequel from Ridley Scott? There’s been zero inkling that this could happen, but Crowe did recently admit to Collider that he was “slightly jealous” of the sequel’s existence. He praised the original film’s enduring legacy while adding, “You don’t always get that kind of longevity with every film you do, so, it obviously holds a special place in my heart.”

Now, don’t get your hopes from that nostalgia, but since the plot of Gladiator 2 is mostly under lock and key, anything could happen. Even ghost city.

Cast

How on earth did Paramount go about casting the event-role of Lucius II as an adult? Studio execs Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland witnessed a shirtless Paul Mescal onstage and knew that they had their dude. Via Variety:

To see if Mescal could fill out a toga, Cercek and Ireland watched his performance in the West End revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “He played Stanley, and there are several moments where he takes off his shirt and it was electric,” Cercek says. “The ladies in the audience were very vocal, and we were like, ‘I think we’ve found our guy.’”

Multiple actors from the first film also reprise their roles for the sequel. That includes Connie Nielsen (as Lucilla), Derek Jacobi (as Senator Gracchus), and Djimon Hounsou (as Juba). We might have been robbed of Barry Keoghan doing shifty, villainous things in Ancient Rome, since (as Deadline reported) he had to drop out for scheduling reasons because he is everywhere else these days. Keoghan departed the role of Emperor Geta, which has been picked up by Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus).

Additionally, the movie stars Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal (who gathered eye-popping arena-battle experience in Game of Thrones) in mystery roles along with May Calamawy and Lior Raz. As for Mescal doing blockbuster leading man duties as Lucius II, he has gone on record to express trepidation of whether his fame will skyrocket following this sequel’s release. Good luck?

Release Date

Gladiator 2 will entertain us in theaters on November 22, 2024, which is the weekend before Thanksgiving. If the sequel is anything like its predecessor in quality, this movie will have long legs through awards season.

Trailer

The followup film hasn’t yet graced us with a trailer yet, so it’s time to relive the most repeated line of dialogue from Russell Crowe’s career:

Nearly twenty-five years have passed since arena-bound Gladiator star Russell Crowe shouted, “Are you not entertained?” Well, Ridley Scott plans on entertaining the original film’s audience (and hopefully, a few new generations, given the cast) with a sequel. Expectations are obviously running high, given that the original was both a box-office smash and an Academy Award success, taking home the Best Picture award with Russell Crowe picking up Best Actor. At the same time, the reality that a sequel is nearly upon us still feels surreal, given that Maximus didn’t make it out of the first film alive.

Ridley Scott, of course, recently finished up directing another historical epic, Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix, who happens to also have portrayed Emperor Commodus in the original Gladiator. That character also didn’t live to see another era of Ancient Rome, but the good news is that there’s a loaded cast for Gladiator 2, which has finished filming, according to the sequel’s star. Here’s what we know about the upcoming blockbuster film.

Plot

The events of Gladiator 2 have long been the stuff of legends and rumors, and at one point Nick Cave (yes, that Nick Cave) wrote a fantastical script (detailed by Collider) that would have bought Maximus back in the afterlife. And that wouldn’t have happened simply as a quick ghost cameo but as the main plot point after Maximus awakens in the Roman afterlife, which isn’t as idyllic as he imagined. On an even odder note, he would have been tasked with a long and winding odyssey back in Rome, where the fully-grown Emperor Lucius II would have been as god-awful as his Uncle Commodus.

(Fortunately, this did not happen ^^ even though it sounds like a fun movie to watch under the influence.)

In the actual remake from Ridley Scott, the story will pick up around two decades following the events of the first movie. The story follows Lucius II (Paul Mescal), the adult son of Roman empress Lucilla (the returning Connie Nielsen). In the time between the two films, according to Scott while speaking with Rotten Tomatoes, “He’s been in the wilderness” after having “lost touch with his mother.” When the story picks up, Lucilla believes that her son is dead, and boy, will she be surprised.

Filming has been completed, and is there a tiny chance that Crowe could do the ghost thing in this sequel from Ridley Scott? There’s been zero inkling that this could happen, but Crowe did recently admit to Collider that he was “slightly jealous” of the sequel’s existence. He praised the original film’s enduring legacy while adding, “You don’t always get that kind of longevity with every film you do, so, it obviously holds a special place in my heart.”

Now, don’t get your hopes from that nostalgia, but since the plot of Gladiator 2 is mostly under lock and key, anything could happen. Even ghost city.

Cast

How on earth did Paramount go about casting the event-role of Lucius II as an adult? Studio execs Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland witnessed a shirtless Paul Mescal onstage and knew that they had their dude. Via Variety:

To see if Mescal could fill out a toga, Cercek and Ireland watched his performance in the West End revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “He played Stanley, and there are several moments where he takes off his shirt and it was electric,” Cercek says. “The ladies in the audience were very vocal, and we were like, ‘I think we’ve found our guy.’”

Multiple actors from the first film also reprise their roles for the sequel. That includes Connie Nielsen (as Lucilla), Derek Jacobi (as Senator Gracchus), and Djimon Hounsou (as Juba). We might have been robbed of Barry Keoghan doing shifty, villainous things in Ancient Rome, since (as Deadline reported) he had to drop out for scheduling reasons because he is everywhere else these days. Keoghan departed the role of Emperor Geta, which has been picked up by Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus).

Additionally, the movie stars Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal (who gathered eye-popping arena-battle experience in Game of Thrones) in mystery roles along with May Calamawy and Lior Raz. As for Mescal doing blockbuster leading man duties as Lucius II, he has gone on record to express trepidation of whether his fame will skyrocket following this sequel’s release. Good luck?

Release Date

Gladiator 2 will entertain us in theaters on November 22, 2024, which is the weekend before Thanksgiving. If the sequel is anything like its predecessor in quality, this movie will have long legs through awards season.

Trailer

The followup film hasn’t yet graced us with a trailer yet, so it’s time to relive the most repeated line of dialogue from Russell Crowe’s career:

Jimmy Kimmel landed a blow on failed presidential candidate Ron DeSantis while tackling the recent Oscar drama over Barbie. The Florida governor ended his flailing campaign on Sunday, officially putting to bed any chances of replacing Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ticket. That news was quickly overshadowed by the Oscar nominations, so Kimmel went ahead and combined the two with brutal results.

While Barbie was nominated for Best Picture, the Academy made the odd choice of not nominating the film’s star Margot Robbie for Best Actress or Greta Gerwig for Best Director. However, Ryan Gosling picked up a nomination for his performance at Ken, and like a lot of people, Kimmel couldn’t help but notice that the Oscar snubs seemed very familiar.

“Barbie was nominated for eight Academy awards, which, who would have imagined?” Kimmel said via The Wrap. “Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were not nominated for acting or directing. Whereas Ryan Gosling was. He got a nomination for playing Ken, which, ironically, was kind of the plot of the Barbie movie.”

While social media spent most of Tuesday highlighting how the Oscar snubs proved Barbie‘s thesis, Kimmel went another direction by taking a shot at Meatball-less Ron DeSantis.

“It’s pretty crazy. You know, Ryan Gosling plays a guy with no testicles and gets an Oscar nomination. Ron DeSantis does it, he has to drop out of the primary,” Kimmel joked. “It not fair! It’s not fair.”

(Via The Wrap)

In the summer of 2022, Maggie Rogers followed Heard It In A Past Life, her breakout debut album from 2019, with her second LP, Surrender. We’re approaching two years since the release of that project, so naturally, fans are wondering when they can expect her next album

Is Maggie Rogers Releasing A New Album In 2024?

It certainly appears so.

Back in May 2023, Rogers revealed that her next album was pretty much finished. She wrote in an Instagram post, “that’s a wrap on LP3 !!!! [star emoji] [butterfly emoji] written + recorded + off to mixing. so so so in love with these songs and cannot wait to start playing them for you this summer.”

It wasn’t made clear at the time when Rogers was thinking about releasing the album, but fans suspect she has quietly started the rollout. On Instagram yesterday (January 23), Rogers shared a simple image of the letters “MR” (her initials), written in a fancy-looking script on a white background. She didn’t offer any additional information beyond that, but the post’s comments section was filled with fans excitedly speculating that Rogers plans to announce her third album soon.

Furthermore, in an Instagram post from January 22, Rogers shared an 11-second snippet of new music. On December 31, she posted a 38-second sample of another unreleased song.

So, we don’t know for sure yet, but all signs seem to be pointing to a new Rogers album arriving in 2024.

First Attempt: Noah Kahan Is Interesting Because I’m Writing About Him (Probably) A Little Too Late

“Have you heard of Noah Kahan?”

It was May of 2023. My editor was quizzing me on Slack. I was not prepared.

“No.”

“Look at the billing this guy is getting.”

My editor shared a screenshot of the Austin City Limits Music Festival poster. On the left side of the poster were the headliners, listed vertically: Kendrick Lamar, Foo Fighters, Mumford & Sons — all the way down to The 1975 and Hozier. Then, to the right in a big block of horizontal lines packed with text, was “this guy” at the very top, between the singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers and the British rapper Labrinth. This was, indeed, a very notable billing for some dude I had never heard of.

I punched the words “Noah Kahan” into Spotify. “His streaming numbers are strong,” I Slacked back to my editor. I clicked on one of his songs and gave it a half-listen. “He’s very much in the Hozier/Lumineers vein” was my snap judgment.

“That kind of crap is always popular,” I deduced.

My editor replied that none of the other people he asked about Noah Kahan had heard of him either. “Apparently his fan army is called the Busyheads,” he said.

“Gag.”

After that, things got pretty catty between me and my editor, as things do when you’re commiserating online with a co-worker about a successful though seemingly under-the-radar folk singer. Let’s just say that we both expressed unkind sentiments about his music and the earnest demeanor of his press photos, which depicted Mr. Kahan as a “soulful nature guy” type with long black hair, a black beard, and quietly intense dark eyes.

“This kind of music seems particularly prone to this sort of phenom — twee/boring folk singers who are secretly huge,” I typed. “The kind of shit nobody likes to write about and tons of people like to put on in the background.”

Looking at these Slack messages eight months later, I still (kind of) agree with them. But I was also clearly wrong. Because here I am, somebody, writing about Noah Kahan. Worse, I’m writing about him (probably) a little too late.

Better late than never? Let’s see how well the rest of this column goes.

Second Attempt: Noah Kahan Is Interesting Because He’s Huge

He was already huge in May of 2023. But he’s even bigger now. And he is going to continue growing enormously throughout this year. I just know it. It feels inevitable. If there is one thing I know about Noah Kahan it’s to never underestimate his potential to grow enormously.

Have you heard of Noah Kahan? He’s a 27-year-old singer-songwriter from Vermont. Up until very recently, Kahan fell into a category I refer to as “popular but not famous.” These are artists who are not generally recognizable to the average person because they haven’t been publicized by the mainstream media. But when you look at their streaming numbers you realize that they’re somehow ranked among the most successful musicians in America. (The inverse is “famous but not popular,” which applies to acts that get a ton of press but don’t have a big audience. The kind of artist that used to be described as a “critic’s darling.” Stephen Malkmus is the anti-Noah Kahan.)

Kahan currently has 33 million monthly listeners on Spotify. That’s 13 million more than the Foo Fighters, one of the top headliners on that Austin City Limits poster my editor Slacked at me. But that’s only the beginning. This guy is no longer “popular but not famous.” He’s getting to be popular and famous. Kahan’s 2022 album Stick Season has gone platinum, and the expanded 2023 reissue slotted all 18 songs on Billboard‘s Hot Rock & Alternative charts. The album is currently lodged in the Top 5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and the title track is moving toward the Top 10 in the singles rankings, nearly a year and a half after it was originally released. Last month, he was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Next month, he’s up for a Best New Artist Grammy. Given the kind of music he makes — plucky, tasteful, and aggressively uplifting folk rock that is to Mumford & Sons what Bob Dylan was to Woody Guthrie — there’s a strong chance he will win the award.

Oh, and you should look at the billing this guy is getting at music festivals in 2024. (Or his upcoming tour of arenas and stadiums, which is so big it has created a Taylor-esque Ticketmaster crisis.) If you are planning to see live music in a large field packed with sunburned Zoomers this summer, you will likely have Noah Kahan in your life.

Third Attempt: Noah Kahan Is Interesting Because He Explains How Music Gets Popular Now

Here’s a joke: A music critic is found brutally murdered in his apartment. Two detectives show up to investigate. In desperation, one of the detectives asks the music critic’s pet parrot if it saw anything.

“Because of TikTok! Because of TikTok!” the parrot says.

The detective is confused. “This parrot thinks that TikTok murdered his owner!”

The second detective shakes his head. “The parrot is just repeating something he heard a music critic say a million times.”

The point of the joke is obvious: Music critics in 2024 love to give TikTok credit for everything that happens in pop music. It’s the most convenient cliché, the “defense wins championships” of music criticism. Though in the case of Noah Kahan, the credit is warranted. He started previewing the song “Stick Season” on the social media app all the way back in the fall of 2020, nearly two years before it officially came out. In that time the song’s popularity grew as scores of would-be Noah Kahans posted their own covers.

The regional specificity of the track also attracted an audience in the Northeast — the title alludes to a phrase that New Englanders use to describe that bleak period between fall and winter when temperatures drop but it has not yet snowed. (Kahan is like the Whole Foods version of Jonathan Richman.) In the lyrics, Kahan shouts out his home state of Vermont and laments that he can’t travel to alleviate his seasonal depression “because there’s COVID on the planes,” a still-timely reference that felt extra relevant when “Stick Season” first popped up in TikTok feeds.

But the construction of Kahan’s career goes beyond just one app. The rollout for the Stick Season album and the followup reissue has been clever, innovative, and unrelenting. Last summer, one of Kahan’s best songs, the spritely bad boyfriend apologia “Dial Drunk,” received a boost when he recorded a duet version with Post Malone. In the fall, he started releasing duet incarnations of Stick Season tracks with big-name collaborations on a monthly basis. And he chose his partners wisely, switching between established stars (Hozier, Kacey Musgraves, Sam Fender) and young up-and-comers that populate Kahan’s buzzy “popular but not famous” cohort (Lizzy McAlpine, Gracie Abrams).

This strategy has paid off incredibly well in two important ways. One, it has kept Stick Season on the charts. Two, it has made Stick Season (unlike virtually every other album that is released now) feel like a momentous “event” record with serious legs. An album so impactful that even Kacey Musgraves is moved to perform one of its songs. It’s an LP that signifies an “era,” to borrow a phrase used and transformed by one of Kahan’s key influences.

Fourth Attempt: Noah Kahan Is Interesting Because (Some Of) His Songs Are (Pretty) Good

In case it wasn’t obvious from how I have avoided the subject for about 1,200 words I will state it definitively now: I am ambivalent about Noah Kahan’s music. Though I do like exactly four of his songs, which also happen to be four of his most popular. “Stick Season” (more than 487 million streams) typifies Kahan’s talent for setting a scene with some well-chosen details. (The line about an ex’s mom forgetting that he exists is good observational songwriting, particularly if you are a former unremarkable boyfriend.) “Dial Drunk” (155 million streams) demonstrates his seemingly effortless knack for writing anthemic songs that deliver Pavlovian emotional surges with every soaring oh-oh-oh. “Northern Attitude” (55 million streams) is his funniest song. (He appears to blame acting like a jerk on bad weather, which is sort of the opposite of what Shirley Manson does in Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains.”) And “Homesick,” my personal Noah Kahan tune (nearly 100 million streams), is the one time he (almost) rocks.

On these songs (as well as the voluminous number of lesser Noah Kahan numbers) he reminds me of a northern Zach Bryan. Both guys present a sensitive but still traditionally masculine image that melds fashionable terminology about trauma and addiction with more old-school ideas about solitary men who stoically nurse wounded feelings about failed relationships and troubled childhoods. Though Kahan, mercifully, isn’t as prone to churning out mid-tempo downers. Rather, he’s more inclined to inspirational maximalism. This starts with his voice, a keening tenor that resembles Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes after an extra large cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Even Kahan’s most introspective and depressive tunes bop along with briskly plucked guitars and banjos as well as hand claps and boot stomps, a formula borrowed from the Mumford wave of jaunty and suspenders-wearing folk-rockers of the early 2010s. (At least Kahan, to his credit, dresses like someone from the current century.)

As for Taylor Swift, Kahan adopted the form of songwriting that she popularized and codified for the present generation of singer-songwriters, from Olivia Rodrigo (a noted Kahan fan) to Conan Gray to the members of Boygenius. It’s a style based in extreme literalism, in which the singer presents the lyrics as straightforward diaristic confessions about romantic misadventures. Language-for-the-sake-of-language songwriting is the antithesis of this approach; the result, if not the intention, is to build a parasocial relationship with an audience that sees themselves (and just as important sees the artist) in the lyrics. Ambiguity, metaphors, or poetic incoherence are unacceptable. These songs have to be explainable or at least “solvable.” Relatability is a requirement. The artist doesn’t have to always “be a good person” in their songs, whatever that means. But they must be self-aware and self-deprecating about their misbehavior. Binge drinking, personal pettiness, romantic volatility — these things need to ultimately signify something noble, a cathartic expression of truth in pursuit of health.

On Stick Season, Kahan writes about sobriety (“Orange Juice”), taking his meds (“Growing Sideways”), and the unsettled state of his parents’ marriage (“All My Love”). It’s impossible to miss what these songs are about when you listen to the record, though Kahan has also spoken with admirable openness about his own mental health struggles. He even started an organization to propagate emotional wellness. These are good and positive lifestyle choices, and I commend him for it. He comes across as a solid guy. But as art, many of Kahan’s songs fall into the “songwriting-as-posting” zone, in which individual lyrics appear to be expressly designed for sharing via tweets and Instagram posts, like a status update set to three chords.

Kahan is undoubtedly good at coming up with a memorable line, like “I’m mean because I grew up in New England” from “Homesick,” which I am sure has enchanted countless self-justifying Massholes in the greater Boston area. What’s less endearing is his overwhelming solipsism. Nothing is more fascinating to Kahan than the minutia of his own screw-ups. Like the other Swift-adjacent artists who work in this vein, his songs start to feel suffocating when you listen to a whole album’s worth of them. I certainly ran out of patience during the annoying (and very Swift-like) “She Calls Me Back,” in which Kahan runs through his inner monologue while pining over yet another girl who got away. “Does it bite at your edges? / Do you lie awake restless? / Why am I so obsessive?” I don’t know but here’s a guess: Because this sort of performative fretfulness pays?

Fifth Attempt: Noah Kahan Is Interesting Because He Is A Human Streaming Algorithm

Of all the interviews Kahan has given during his momentous rise, the one that sticks out most was posted on Grammy.com at the end of 2023. The premise was for Noah to single out the most crucial moments of his career so far. The success of his breakout song “Stick Season” naturally made the cut. Here he is talking about how quickly his audience responded to the track:

A lot of my set at the time was more pop-leaning, and this song is definitely more folk-leaning. I could really see the desire for sing-along folk anthems after that performance. [I remember] talking to my team and being like, “I think this song is gonna be around for a long time.”

Here, again, Kahan displays a Swiftian tendency, though in this instance he echoes her impeccable business sense. I could really see the desire for sing-along folk anthems, he says. And that’s what he delivers, over and over, on Stick Season. Even songs that might have benefitted from a scaled-down approach, like the lilting “Orange Juice,” eventually give way to the hand claps and the ohhhhs. He can’t help himself. It’s what people want. And his team agrees.

Sixth Attempt: Noah Kahan Is Interesting Because Resistance Is Futile

Have you heard of Noah Kahan? You certainly have now. And he might already be your new favorite singer-songwriter or the latest dude you despise above all the other white dudes with guitars. Ten years ago, during the height of Mumford & Sons, I regularly mixed with two camps of people: Music critics who could not stand Mumford & Sons, and “regular people” who would not shut up Mumford & Sons anytime they performed on an awards show. I have had a similar experience with Noah Kahan. My brother-in-law — a man who always seems to know about “huge on Spotify” singer-songwriters before I do — is a casual Busyhead. I’m guessing at least one of your in-laws is one, too. Noah Kahan is a man built for streaming platforms. If a Noah Kahan song comes up on a playlist, it will grab you. That’s what it was built to do.

And there are a lot of other “popular but not famous” guys who are ready to fill the secondary Lumineers/Head And The Heart slots in the long tail of Kahan’s success. People like Warren Zeiders and Briston Maroney are waiting in the wings to serenade us about their hang-ups. This kind of music is back. This kind of music never went away. Get used to it.