Noah Kahan turned Vermont heartache into multi-platinum hits and a $13 million mental health fund, and now says he wants to access more joy in his music.
The 29-year-old singer-songwriter sat down with correspondent Luke Burbank in the woods of Vermont to talk about the long road from a high-school joke to stadium tours. CBS News profiled the multi-platinum, two-time Grammy-nominated artist as his latest album landed and a Netflix documentary put his private battles on screen.
His breakthrough did not start in a boardroom. It started with a partial song he almost deleted.
In 2020 Kahan posted a scrap of what became “Stick Season.” He had a habit of yanking posts that did not catch fire fast.
He left this one up. By the next morning other artists and creators were covering it.
Kahan recalled the shock of realizing the audience was bigger than he knew:
"And it felt like, Whoa, more people know me than I thought! And it was kind of one of those moments where I was like, maybe I do have like a career ahead of me."
The 2022 album “Stick Season” turned that moment into multi-platinum sales, Grammy nominations, and sold-out stadium dates. Fans came for the intimate feel, not pyro and backup dancers. Kahan said the rooms feel big and small at the same time because people “kind of go into their own worlds.”
His high-school yearbook prediction had been modest. He told Burbank:
"My high school prediction was Most Likely to Be a Regionally-Known Musician. I think it was supposed to be an insult, but I'm happy to have found my niche."
April brought “The Great Divide.” Every song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, surpassing the commercial mark set by “Stick Season.” A Netflix documentary, “Noah Kahan: Out of Body,” arrived alongside it and showed struggles that included body dysmorphia.
The follow-up had not come easily. After the first wave of success, Kahan said he spent the whole time “waiting for the other shoe to fall” and wondering how he would maintain it. He entered the fourth-album process loaded with expectation and working in “the least artistic, least healthy way.”
His fix was simple and hard: he stepped away from songwriting and waited.
"And the only solution for me really was to step away from songwriting and to wait and to trust that what I've loved to do my entire life would return to me in its purest form. And it did."
It took nearly four years. The songs came back. The next stadium tour is already selling out.
Kahan still writes from home. He wants listeners to see more than the clichés.
"I think people think about Vermont and they think maple syrup, Bernie Sanders, flannel T-shirts, Subaru Outbacks, and they're not wrong, but there's so much more here, and I think it's important to tell those stories, too."
Lyrics reference places like the Twin State line. The setting of the interview itself was the woods he keeps returning to. That rooted detail is part of why crowds treat the shows like shared memory rather than spectacle.
Mental health talk runs through the music and the business side of his career. As a teenager he was caught with marijuana and sent to counseling. The counselor ran through risk and symptom questions. Kahan checked nearly every box.
Her reply stuck:
"Oh, so I'll put you in the busyhead category."
He kept the word. In 2023 he founded The Busyhead Project to get mental health help to people who might not otherwise afford it. At an intimate fundraiser back home last month he announced the effort had raised more than $13 million.
He credits his family for treating the subject without melodrama. Conversations happened “alongside laughs and jokes,” so it never felt like something that had to stay dark or secret. The label “busyhead,” he said, is not a scarlet letter. It just means a lot is going on upstairs.
Giant screens on tour still make him wince at certain angles. He admitted he is “confronted with the way I look all the time.” Talking about it publicly has also made him more comfortable in his own skin and opened the door for fans who recognize the same fight.
Sorrow built the catalog that filled the seats. Kahan is done pretending that is the only gear he owns.
He put the intention in plain language:
"There's been so much joy in my life and I want to access that joy more, because I think I deserve it, and I think the fans would still listen to it. I'm scared to trust myself to be content, because it's just not a feeling I've ever really lived with, but I'd love to try. And it's my intention to try, and so we'll see."
The same artist who once deleted TikToks out of insecurity now watches every track from a new album chart and every date on a stadium run disappear. He still talks about the place that raised him. He still funds practical help for people stuck in their own heads. And he is trying, on purpose, to let contentment into the work.
Honest songs, local roots, and a clear-eyed decision to keep showing up beat any committee’s idea of what an artist should be.
