After four years of anticipation, American singer-songwriter Noah Kahan released his fourth studio album, “The Great Divide,” a collection of 17 beautiful songs all exhibiting a sense of longing and sadness.
The album was first teased by Kahan on his social media accounts early this year. Kahan created a “secret” Tiktok account with the handle, @thelastofthebugs, where he would play snippets of his new songs that were going to be included in the new album.
“The last of the bugs” was a lyric from his song “The View Between Villages” from his previous album “Stick Season.” Although “Stick Season” was his third album, it was the album that helped Kahan rise to fame because of how popular it became on social media.
“The View Between Villages” itself, has two different versions: the original version and its ‘‘extended’’ version. The difference in the two being voice memos being inserted into the extended version. The song displays a sense of confliction, from being in a better place than you’ve ever been, “and there is meaning on earth, and I am happy,” to wanting to return to a place where things weren’t necessarily good but you still want to go back. “I’m back between villages, and everything’s still,” the last lyric of the song displays being stuck between these two places in time.
Right away, the meaning and feelings present in that song set the stage and expectation for his next album. Officially being announced as “The Great Divide” on Jan. 28, 2026, Kahan fans excitedly waited for its release.
The title track, “The Great Divide,” was released two days after the announcement of the album’s release. In the first section of the song Kahan sings, “We got cigarette burns in the same side of our hands,” automatically, the song paints a story of two friends that seem to have known each other forever and are connected in so many ways. He then goes on to describe how this friend’s mental health is rapidly declining, and how hard it was to see it, “My deep misunderstanding of your life and how bad it must have been for you back then.”
This eventually drives them apart and they can no longer be friends. Kahan describes this friend as fearing for their soul and morality in constraints of religion, seemingly overwhelming and massive things to worry about. The chorus portrays Kahan wishing that his friend now just worries about small ordinary things, wishing them a better life, despite the fact that their friendship has ended.
The song captures the pain but also the love you can hold for someone you once knew. He displays how a connection never really goes away no matter how much time is spent apart, you will always hold some sort of love for someone because you loved them before. Everyone has felt the loss of someone’s presence in their life and the way that he captures that feeling makes it even more real and exceptional.
The rest of the album dives into the different types of relationships a person can hold and the melancholy feelings that encompass life.
The very first song on the tracklist is titled “End of August.” The track begins with cicadas singing in the background and a piano melody. Although it may seem simple and like it means nothing at first, cicadas are a staple of summer and the piano sounds like a nostalgic day, bringing about the idea of it being the end of August, the end of summer, but also the beginning of something new.
Throughout the song there is a slow build up, both musically and lyrically into the chorus. The song begins with a slow tempo, the lyrics mirroring the tempo once the instrumental start is over. Kahan then sings, “Cause we never do anythin’ real, we just talk about it,” painting this picture of two people, whoever they are, living a small town life.
Kahan grew up in the town Strafford, Vermont. A lot of his songs reflect his feelings of growing up in a town where he felt stuck. Oftentimes growing up in a small town can feel limiting to your future and your opportunities in life. Never doing anything real despite someone wanting to, describes the feeling of being glued to your small town and not being able to do what you want to.
However, the song doesn’t just describe feeling stuck, it portrays the story of making that place your home, “Till it’s our town, and it’s ours now,” and accepting your life and how beautiful it can be, “The feeling of being alive for the first time, in a long time.”
Sometimes, while growing up you can lose sight of all the beauty in the world because as a kid you’re oblivious to all the bad things in the world. In “End of August,” Kahan paints a nostalgic picture of the journey of learning to appreciate the world again and where you come from, not just through his lyricism but also through every note of the piano, in the sound of the cicadas, and in the quiet beginning and the thunderous end. The musicality and lyricism involved in this song by itself, but in the album as a whole is what makes it so sensational.
In the eighth track of the album, “Willing and Able,” Kahan explores a complicated, seemingly broken relationship. The song comes from the perspective of one of the people in the relationship described in the lyrics. It begins with the lyric, “Oh, when my weight left the room, did you take a deep breath,” making it seem like the weight of this person’s presence was suffocating the other person in this relationship.
Kahan then goes on to describe all the different types of arguments they’ve had and how they’re disconnected from each other, “I wish you could know me and I wish I could know you much more sometimes,” this possibly causing their tension. He sings, “When I stay the night, then we drink,” making it seem like they’re enabling and only dragging each other down.
Throughout the song, Kahan mentions alcohol and hints towards their possible mutual abuse of alcohol, making the title of the song, “Willing and Able,” make a lot more sense. Having any type of addiction takes away a lot of self control a person has. Being willing to fix your relationship doesn’t mean it will get fixed because, especially whenever it comes to people with addictions, you also have to be able to have the ability to fix your relationship.
Kahan stresses how being willing and able to fix a relationship is more important than just wanting to fix it, without ever really going out and saying it. Being able to stop your destructive actions, being able to correct your past mistakes, not just willing but being able to, sends an important message. It shows how addiction can affect so many things, this topic being explored in some of Kahan’s songs before.
A day after the original album was released, Kahan released a deluxe version called, “The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs.” The album featured four new songs, one of them being titled “Orbiter.”
“Orbiter” explores Kahan’s want and need for a grounding love. “I’m an astronaut, you’re the moon, I stare at you, I sing to you, I circle you,” describing his all consuming love. Circling his “moon,” meaning orbiting and revolving your entire life around the type of love you hold for one person, despite what can happen.
The love is so all-consuming that without it, he feels like he’s floating in space. Kahan shows that it isn’t just about love, but it is about stability within that relationship. The last two lyrics in the song, “If I’m gonna lose you either way, I’m gonna lose you either way,” make it seem like Kahan believes that the relationship won’t last forever. It shows how pure and true this love is because he is still loving them, despite knowing he might already lose them.
In “The Great Divide,” Kahan tells a beautiful story, exploring so many different types of relationships leaving no stone unturned in any of his songs and making it an album to remember for generations.