After Noah Kahan’s success with his album “Stick Season” in 2022, Kahan didn’t know what was next. How does an artist follow up an album that changed his life? In the newly released Netflix documentary, Noah Kahan: Out of Body, Kahan talked about much of this struggle and the exploration with making his fourth studio album, The Great Divide. Noah Kahan said to People, “I think I was close to giving up music. I didn’t know what my own voice was and suddenly I was thrust back into Vermont.” The album goes into Kahan’s life now and how fame has changed his relationship with his home of Vermont.

Across the 77 minutes, Kahan explores the emotional, physical and psychological gaps that grow between people who once shared a close bond. Noah Kahan tells the people, “I started to think about divide in my life, whether that was the divide between me and this old version of me, or me and the people that I used to know growing up, or the people that are in my life that I’m still trying to keep a relationship with.”

The lead single on this track, “The Great Divide” was released on January 30th and represents this album perfectly. This song was interpreted in many different ways, sharing the theme of the unspoken differences. It talks about the friendships that slowly drift apart, the versions of ourselves we can no longer reach and the words we never said.

In my opinion, Noah Kahan captured many different feels within this album. In slower songs like Lighthouse, he captures all of the feels in more of an emotional song while songs like Haircut still show emotions through lyrics. In my opinion, The Great Divide also showed many melodic similarities to his 2022 album, Stick Season. 

The public also had many opinions about The Great Divide. Many online opinions reflect what Noah Kahan planned to capture. Many felt very emotional within the song writing and melodies.