‘The Great Divide’ by Noah Kahan - Lyrics & Meaning

To say we've been waiting a while for this song feels like a major understatement. After debuting ‘The Great Divide’ during his We'll All Be Here Forever Tour in 2024, Noah Kahan promptly made the soul-searching anthem a mainstay of his setlist.

But for the best part of two years, there was still no sign of an official studio version, and fans grew increasingly impatient. Thankfully, as of Friday, January 30th 2026, we can finally stream the folk titan's intricate gem. What's more, shortly before its release, Kahan took to socials to confirm ‘The Great Divide’ is the title-track from his eagerly anticipated new studio album, which arrives on April 24th 2026.

The ‘Stick Season’ chart-topper has made it clear throughout the rollout for The Great Divide that this song was a cornerstone of the project, with Kahan explaining via X ahead of his 2024 Live from Fenway record why he wouldn't be including ‘The Great Divide’ in that body of work, despite performing it at his Fenway shows.

He shared, “I have news that is going to bum some folks out but I feel the need to explain and not surprise people with.. The Great Divide will NOT be on the fenway live album”.

The ‘Northern Attitude’ singer-songwriter went on to reveal that he had been creating his next batch of songs with ‘The Great Divide’ at the heart of the roadmap, “I know this is a bummer for some and I love the song so so much but it is for that reason that...I do not want to put out a recorded version of that song without the context of the newer music I’ve been writing around it. I do feel like it fits into a new theme that I’ve been exploring for my fourth album (which I have not finished sorry I’ve been on tour for 2 years lol)...and I want to make sure that it comes out in a way that feels authentic to the story I want to tell around it”.

Kahan concluded on a note of heartfelt gratitude for his fans, “I didn’t realize how much people would love this song and I just started playing it on tour because I was trying to keep myself excited. It’s my fault for teasing it...without the right plan in place to put it out. Love you all and I can’t wait for you to hear these songs”.

The track finds Kahan reflecting on an old friendship that has seemingly been deeply affected by shared trauma. The overall narrative arc feels somewhat reminiscent of ‘Orange Juice’, one of our favourite songs from Kahan's Stick Season era, with the folk trailblazer touching on themes of spirituality, accountability among those we love and more throughout this powerful, gut-wrenching offering.

It's always difficult when you've heard countless snippets, clips and live performances of a song before the studio version comes out, because it usually means we have a fully formed opinion of the track prior to hearing the official rendition.

However, with ’The Great Divide’, the evocative lyricism, the surging, electrifying hook and dramatic instrumentation are so entrancing and moving, that they radiate throughout any version of this track. Nonetheless, the 2026 studio version introduces an added sense of gravitas and atmosphere through the raging electric guitars and Kahan's reverb-laden vocals. The swelling composition accentuates the emotional weight and yearning for reconciliation - or, at the very least, for the other person to find happiness - that underpins the narrative.

Kahan has always flitted between genres and sub-genres with ease, channelling Ed Sheeran-esque pop on the likes of ‘Hurt Somebody’ and ‘Animal’, shifting towards folkier textures on ‘Maine’ and ‘Stick Season’, while venturing into the raging, rock-infused style of ‘Homesick’ and ‘Your Needs, My Needs’.

Therefore it's unsurprising to hear the ‘She Calls Me Back’ crooner delving into new territory on ’The Great Divide’, with the built-out composition feeling like a more fiery - and more hopeful - version of the folk that pervaded Stick Season, while incorporating angsty, turbulent, rock-leaning aesthetics, particularly towards the end.

“I can't recall the last time that we talked
About anything but looking out for cops
We got cigarette burns on the same side of our hands, but we ain't friends
We're just morons who broke skin in the same spot
But I've never seen you take a turn that wide
And I'm high enough to still care if I die
Well, I tried to read the thoughts that you'd worked overtime to stop
You said, "F*** off," and I said nothing for a while”

‘The Great Divide’s lyrics are - in classic Noah Kahan fashion - highly enigmatic and open to interpretation. Generally speaking, the main arc of the song is a protagonist who is singing to an old friend who he has since grown apart from, with Kahan hinting that they perhaps struggled with religious trauma and spiritual angst.

The curtain opens on a protagonist who is reflecting on a friendship that was once close and full of love, that has since been warped, seemingly because of a traumatic event.

The narrator appears to touch on themes of self-harm when he sings, “We got cigarette burns on the same side of our hands, but we ain't friends / We're just morons who broke skin in the same spot”. Kahan has always had a penchant for visceral and often jarring descriptions relating to the body, epitomised on ‘Growing Sideways’, for instance, when he dryly reflects on his therapy, “And I divvied up my anger into thirty separate parts / Keep the bad s*** in my liver and the rest around my heart”. Similarly, on ‘Forever’, Kahan powerfully muses, “I broke a bone that never healed in my hand / So, when I hold her close, I might loosen my grip”.

Although not 100% clear, it appears the incident that led to the friends growing apart may have been a car crash. While they are both high, the driver seemingly takes a turn too wide, with the protagonist recalling the sensation of fearing for his life.

This consolidates the mirrored narrative to that of ‘Orange Juice’, which pivots around a harrowing crash; there are no broken bones, but the relationship is irrevocably fractured.

Here, Kahan sings about his old friend working “overtime” to try and quieten the voices in their head that have been giving him grief, perhaps by getting high and drinking. He makes a gentle effort to break through to them, but is greeted with a blunt “F*** off”. Later in the song, the narrator admits guilt at not trying harder.

“You know I think about you all the time
And my deep misunderstanding of your life
And how bad it must havе been for you back then
And how hard it was to keep it all inside
I hope you sеttle down, I hope you marry rich
I hope you're scared of only ordinary s***
Like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin
And not your soul and what He might do with it”

In the rousing hook, we get a clearer sense that the person's troubling thoughts and mental health struggles have a religious foundation. Kahan intentionally leaves a few blanks for the listener to fill in, but it's possible the friend he is singing to grew up in the church, and carries a deep-seated sense of guilt and self-hatred, which would tie in with the self-harm imagery earlier in the narrative.

Alternatively, perhaps the friend has simply always been prone to existential rumination - and potentially even religious OCD or scrupulosity - where they are so concerned with doing things “right” and in accordance with religious teachings that they are racked with anxiety. Whatever the specific trauma and pain they have been experiencing, it seems our protagonist was not aware of the extent of this, and he outlines his regret for his “deep misunderstanding” of their life.

The narrator heartbreakingly outlines his hopes that they are “scared of all the ordinary s***”, rather than spiritual issues such as “your soul, and what He might do with it”.

“You inched yourself across the great divide
While we drove aimlessly along the Twin State line
I heard nothin' but the bass in every ballad that you'd play
While you swore to God the singer read your mind
But the world is scared of hesitating things
Yeah, they only shoot the birds who cannot sing
And I'm finally aware of how s****y and unfair
It was to stare ahead like everything was fine”

Kahan adds more detail into the picture of that night they were driving together, with the narrator seemingly likening the way their friend drifted around the bend to an attempt to “inch yourself across the great divide”. He uses the Twin State line, a nickname for the border between his home-state of Vermont and New Hampshire, as a metaphor for the titular “great divide” at the heart of this song.

“The great divide” here can have an array of potential connotations. For one, it could refer to the gulf between the material and the spiritual worlds that the protagonist's friend seems to be struggling with, with the desire to “inch” themselves across this bridge and enter another realm a possible reference to suicidal thoughts.

The choice of the lyric “inch” - which conjures up a sense of uncertainty and nervousness - feels pertinent, particularly when Kahan goes on to lament how “the world is scared of hesitating things / Yeah, they only shoot the birds who cannot sing”. This rich language comes together to create a feeling that the friend is trepidatious and scared, with their attempt to cross “the great divide” coming up short.

Perhaps Kahan is simply encouraging his friend to live with conviction, whether this means they decide to dive wholeheartedly into their spirituality, or reject this way of life altogether, rather than living in-between the two and being crippled with doubt.

The protagonist ends this verse by confessing remorse at not helping his friend more, labelling his actions as “s****y and unfair” as he chose to “stare ahead like everything was fine”.

The line “they only shoot the birds who cannot sing” is especially haunting, with Kahan seemingly criticising society for forgetting and being cruel towards those who serve no apparent utility. It's puzzling how this fits into the narrative of ‘The Great Divide’, but it seems he is portraying his friend as being so hesitant and afraid, that it means they have gone through life without a clear sense of direction. As a result of this mentality, which stems from their trauma, they are perceived as being a bird “who cannot sing” - or, in other words, they don't have any utility.

But as Kahan stresses throughout his discography, everyone has a place, everyone is worthy of love and everyone has potential for growth, and we should be kinder and more understanding towards those who are struggling to find their role in life.

More broadly, when factoring in Kahan's comments as part of the album announcement, ‘The Great Divide’ can also denote the lengthening aperture between his childhood and his memories of his home in Vermont, and his current state of being, in which he is forced to grapple with the pressures of fame and touring.

“Rage
In small ways
Did you wish that I could know
You'd fade
To some place
I wasn't brave enough to go?”

The imagery here of fading “to some place / I wasn't brave enough to go” accentuates the idea of the narrator's friend trying to throw themselves across this mysterious “divide”. Again, this could be interpreted as a reference to suicide, particularly with the concept of ‘fading away’, but it could alternatively be a depiction of delving into spiritual ideas and religious beliefs that our protagonist is not “brave enough” to explore. It's interesting hearing our narrator describe the friend as being braver than he is, which contrasts with his earlier portrayal of them as being hesitant and a bird that is unable to sing. This perhaps underlines how he sees something in his friend that the rest of the world overlooks.

“I hope you threw a brick right into that stained glass
I hope you're with someone who isn't scared to ask
I hope that you're not losing sleep about what's next
Or about your soul and what He might do with it”

The concluding words find Kahan doubling down on the apparent theme of religious trauma, as he angrily expresses his hope that his friend “threw a brick right into that stained glass”. The vehemence of this could suggest something more violent than existential turmoil, and perhaps hints at a darker backstory relating to religious mistreatment - although this is unclear and open to personal interpretation.

Above all, even if they are no longer friends, the protagonist simply wants their friend to be happy and free from the thoughts that previously dragged them down into an abyss of despair. He hopes their younger anxieties about death and “what's next” are no longer robbing them of sleep, and that they have found a partner who (as well as being “rich”) is not afraid to have the harder conversations with them, as opposed to simply sweeping those deep-seated struggles under the rug. This juxtaposes the protagonist's apparent failure to talk to their friend about their difficulties earlier in this story, which he still carries guilt for.

It's worth highlighting that there are an array of fan-theories about what this song means, but the real beauty of it is that listeners are finding their own meaning within it.

As part of his official The Great Divide album announcement, Kahan shed some illuminating light on what this body of work represents to him, “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”.

The Vermont native offers insight into his creative process, “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”.

“I can't recall the last time that we talked
About anything but looking out for cops
We got cigarette burns on the same side of our hands, but we ain't friends
We're just morons who broke skin in the same spot
But I've never seen you take a turn that wide
And I'm high enough to still care if I die
Well, I tried to read the thoughts that you'd worked overtime to stop
You said, "F*** off," and I said nothing for a while

-

You know I think about you all the time
And my deep misunderstanding of your life
And how bad it must havе been for you back then
And how hard it was to keep it all inside
I hope you sеttle down, I hope you marry rich
I hope you're scared of only ordinary s***
Like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin
And not your soul and what He might do with it

-

You inched yourself across the great divide
While we drove aimlessly along the Twin State line
I heard nothin' but the bass in every ballad that you'd play
While you swore to God the singer read your mind
But the world is scared of hesitating things
Yeah, they only shoot the birds who cannot sing
And I'm finally aware of how s****y and unfair
It was to stare ahead like everything was fine

-

You know I think about you all the time
And my deep misunderstanding of your life
And how bad it must have been for you back then
And how hard it was to keep it all inside
I hope you settle down, I hope you marry rich
I hope you're scared of only ordinary s***
Like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin
And not your soul and what He might do with it

-

Ah-oh

Rage
In small ways
Did you wish that I could know
You'd fade
To some place
I wasn't brave enough to go?

-

I hope you settle down, I hope you marry rich
I hope you're scared of only ordinary s***
Like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin
And not your soul and what He might do with it

-

Ah, woah
Ah
Ah, Lord
Ah

-

I hope you threw a brick right into that stained glass
I hope you're with someone who isn't scared to ask
I hope that you're not losing sleep about what's next
Or about your soul and what He might do with it”

For more on Noah Kahan, see below:

Noah Kahan

Artist