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How Noah Kahan Went from Vermont to TikTok to the Grammys | The New Yorker

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In recent years, as TikTok has become an increasingly powerful engine for the dissemination of culture, a new sort of pop star has emerged: one who has enormous pull on social media but gets comparatively little acknowledgment from the music press, which remains laser-focussed on a handful of millennial superstars, so much so that the more conspiracy-minded among us have started whispering, “PsyOp.” Noah Kahan is one of those artists—everything to some, inscrutable to others, with striking numbers on Spotify and TikTok, and a steady presence on the Billboard chart since the release of “Stick Season,” his third album, in 2022. Kahan, who was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist this year, is the rare figure who seems positioned to leverage viral success into something more like a traditional career. “I knew there was potential for a moment to happen for me. I didn’t realize it would happen so quickly and in such a big way,” Kahan told me recently. He added, laughing, “I didn’t thi

Save this story Save this story In recent years, as TikTok has become an increasingly powerful engine for the dissemination of culture, a new sort of pop star has emerged: one who has enormous pull on social media but gets comparatively little acknowledgment from the music press, which remains laser-focussed on a handful of millennial superstars, so much so that the more conspiracy-minded among us have started whispering, “PsyOp.” Noah Kahan is one of those artists—everything to some, inscrutable to others, with striking numbers on Spotify and TikTok, and a steady presence on the Billboard cha

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