Noah Kahan Opens A New Chapter With Soul-Searching Single ‘The Great Divide’

Noah Kahan's life has changed drastically over the four years since the release of his breakthrough album, Stick Season, which launched him onto the global stage. Kahan processes some of the emotions of his whirlwind ascent on “The Great Divide,” the newly released title track and lead single from his long-awaited fourth studio album.

The Great Divide is due out on April 24 via Mercury Records. The Vermont-bred artist tapped Stick Season collaborator Gabe Simon to produce his forthcoming LP alongside Aaron Dessner. Noah Kahan mainly recorded the album at Dessner’s Long Pond Studio facility, Gold Pacific Studio in Nashville and “a farm with a firetower in Only, Tennessee.”

Noah Kahan looked back on the journey that led to The Great Divide in a press release heralding the album’s upcoming release, writing:

“The last five years have been the single most challenging, complicatedly beautiful, and life-altering of my career. I was somewhere I understood, and suddenly I was somewhere completely foreign. I was living in the opportunity I always wanted but felt disoriented and unsure of whether I deserved it. Writing for this album was a balancing act of trying to go back in time and move forward in the same moment. Songwriting has always been the way I reflect on my life, and I hope these songs show you a glimpse of what this journey has looked like.”

The singer-songwriter also shared a message to fans on social media about his new LP:

From a long silence forms a divide, a great expanse demanding attention. I stare across it. I see old friends, my father, my mother, my siblings, my younger self, the great state of Vermont. I want to scream these feelings, to gesticulate wildly at the figures on the other side, but my voice has grown hoarse and muted after years of climbing a ladder towards the wild, spiraling dreams that have materialized in front of me. Instead, I wrote them down next to a piano in Nashville, next to a pond in Guilford Vermont, in a legendary studio in upstate New York, on a farm with a firetower in Only, Tennessee. The songs are the words I would say if I could. They are the fears I dance with in the moments before I drift off to sleep. The music here is my best attempt to delve deeper into the people, places, and feelings that have made me who I am. I am grateful for all of it, for all of you, for listening to them, if you choose to do so.

The album’s title track, “The Great Divide,” finds Kahan getting vulnerable as he reflects on friendship lost and the feelings of shame and guilt that come with it. Kahan debuted the song live on April 13, 2024 and has since performed “The Great Divide” over 40 additional times.

Check out Noah Kahan’s official lyric video for “The Great Divide” below:

Noah Kahan will headline the final day of Bonnaroo 2026 on June 14. Kahan also recently revealed he’ll bring his Out Of The Blue Festival back to Mexico January 7 – 10, 2027.