‘Pain is Cold Water’ by Noah Kahan - Lyrics & Meaning

Noah Kahan has been teasing ‘Pain is Cold Water’ since December 2022, with the Vermont chart-topper since sprinkling the introspective track into a handful of setlists and TikTok Lives.

Fans were beginning to fear he'd cast the evocative offering onto his pile of never-to-be-released demos, when Noah Kahan took to his socials in mid-August to share another clip of the song, recorded during his momentous Fenway Park double-header in July 2024. It followed his cryptic video hinting earlier that week that a new body of work linked to his Stick Season era was being readied.

Thankfully, Noah Kahan has now released a live version of ‘Pain is Cold Water’ as part of his Live From Fenway Park album, which arrived everywhere on Friday, August 30th. This will hopefully pave the way for a studio version of ‘Pain is Cold Water’ before long.

‘Pain is Cold Water’ finds Noah Kahan stripping it back and crooning intricately over the gentle, meandering strum of an acoustic guitar. As the stirring ballad progresses, a lively banjo enters the fray, which gives the song an additional boost of energy as Noah launches into the hook. ‘Pain is Cold Water’ is cut from a similar cloth to other sparse, soul-baring highlights from Noah Kahan's stellar Stick Season project, such as ‘Orange Juice’, ‘Growing Sideways’ and ‘Strawberry Wine’.

“I'm the tall glass of water you lost in your kitchen

I'm casually cruel like a senior prediction

Most likely to leave at the sign of a fork in the road

You looked just like your father as the news was delivered

Cut a hole in my heart that bled into my liver

I miss being alone when it didn't mean being alone”

Noah Kahan begins by describing himself self-reproachingly as being as forgettable as the glass of water you leave behind in the kitchen, or as casually and perhaps unintentionally cruel as senior-year predictions, such as ‘Most Likely to Get Arrested’.

Noah Kahan accentuates the emotionality and visceral quality of his music by lacing his songs with specific references that the listener isn't always supposed to fully understand. Here, for instance, Noah mentions how the person he's singing to - who appears to be a lover - reminded him of her father when she got some bad news.

Although it's not evident what this revelation is, Noah Kahan confesses that it impacted him deeply, cutting “a hole in my heart that bled into my liver”. This powerfully conveys how he used alcohol - which can damage the liver - to numb his heartbreak.

He goes on to express his longing for a time when ‘being alone’ didn't necessarily mean ‘being alone’ in the sense of feeling lonely, instead denoting peaceful solitude.

“And if love was contagious, I might be immune to it

Pain's like cold water, your brain just gets used to it

I try to keep swimming and keep Dad's good word in my heart

But they're fighting like dogs in thе town across the river

Over a brand new crosswalk that won't matter come winter

Oh sometimes folks just need something to be angry about

What you angry about?”

Noah Kahan suggests that his mental health struggles have become so persistent that his brain has become accustomed to the pain, in the same way it acclimatises to cold water after a while, so that you no longer notice it. He worries that he might be ‘immune’ to love, inventively framing this experience as a frightful contagion.

He determines to keep swimming through the ‘cold water’ of his mental anguish, and to hold onto his father's advice. Noah Kahan then adjusts the picture, and changes his focus to a nearby town in which citizens are getting agitated over the seemingly trivial construction of a new crosswalk. Noah portrays this fury as pointless, before shrugging his shoulders and concluding that sometimes people need something to feel angry about, to satisfy their inherent restlessness.

“I ain't bitter 'bout much these days

In some ways, I'm damn lucky to be here

Where the miners stayed in the good old days

Yes, real men used to sleep here

All those roadside graves where my friends still lay

I walk by just to weep here

They say killing time ain't a homicide

But a prayer for a leap year

Oh”

Noah Kahan then introduces a more hopeful tone, as he reminds himself how fortunate he is to be where he is today, and experiencing the successes of the past few years.

He references living in a place where there used to be miners and “real men”, implying he doesn't feel adequate in some ways when compared to these forefathers. Vermont, Noah's home-state, has a history of copper, gold and asbestos mining.

We get a hint here as to what the bad news is that Noah mentioned in the opening verse, as he describes walking past the roadside graves of some of his friends. It seems he could be discussing the fatal car crash that he details in ‘Orange Juice’.

Alternatively, he could be using these ‘roadside graves’ as images to convey how his friends’ childhoods ‘died’ due to some traumatic event, which forced them into adulthood.

Noah Kahan delivers a witty phrase, “Killing time ain't a homicide”, underlining how something that could be seen as negative and perhaps lazy might not be as bad as initially thought.

Noah instead depicts people who are killing time as merely wanting to feel as though they have more time, emphasised through the line “Prayer for a leap year”. This suggests that, although they're seen as listlessly ‘wasting time’ and going through the motions, they're only acting in this way because they yearn for more time to enjoy life. A leap year, which comes around every four years, contains one extra day.

“I'm the roach in your drawer, I lived here long before you

I'm the rumble of war, it gets hard to ignore you

Well, love, sometimes folks just need something they can scream at

Scream at

I'm the hills in the distance, you see me, can't be me

You need me in half, Lord, I need you completely

Oh, sometimes folks just need something to scream at”

Noah reels off another flurry of self-deprecating descriptions, before doubling down on the message of the hook by stressing that sometimes people are just angry for the sake of being angry. He admits he desperately needs the affection of his lover, but implies she doesn't feel the same about him, or perhaps that she only wants the part of him that doesn't come across as a “roach in your drawer”. Noah croons agonisingly, “You need me in half, Lord, I need you completely”.

“I'm a college kid with my windows down

I'm an astronaut, you're the moon

I stare at you, I sing to you

I'm in Bordertown, I'm on angry ground

I'm a college kid with my windows down

I'm an astronaut, you're the moon

I sing to you, I scream at you

I'll stare at you, I'll sting at you”

Noah concludes by offering some more positive portrayals of his personality, likening his sense of untethered ambition to that of an astronaut, before depicting his destination - ‘the moon’ - as being his lover. He also describes his feeling of euphoric freedom as akin to that of a wild, untroubled “college kid with my windows down”.

During a tantalising video teaser posted across his socials in August, Noah Kahan hinted at the imminent release of new music as part of his Stick Season era, ahead of sharing a new snippet of ‘Pain is Cold Water’, “There's no way I would release something else Stick Season related...is there? There's no chance...I've milked this thing as far as it can go. There's no way I have more up my sleeve...There's no way there's something else coming...Nuh-uh, no shot. No chance”.

Shortly after, the live version of ‘Pain is Cold Water’ was released on August 30th as part of Noah's Live From Fenway Park project, recorded during his 2024 Boston double-header.

“I'm the tall glass of water you lost in your kitchen

I'm casually cruel like a senior prediction

Most likely to leave at the sign of a fork in the road

You looked just like your father as the news was delivered

Cut a hole in my heart that bled into my liver

I miss being alone when it didn't mean being alone

-

And if love was contagious, I might be immune to it

Pain's like cold water, your brain just gets used to it

I try to keep swimming and keep Dad's good word in my heart

But they're fighting like dogs in thе town across the river

Over a brand new crosswalk that won't matter come winter

Oh sometimes folks just need something to be angry about

What you angry about?

-

I ain't bitter 'bout much these days

In some ways, I'm damn lucky to be here

Where the miners stayed in the good old days

Yes, real men used to sleep here

All those roadside graves where my friends still lay

I walk by just to weep here

They say killing time ain't a homicide

But a prayer for a leap year

Oh

-

I'm the roach in your drawer, I lived here long before you

I'm the rumble of war, it gets hard to ignore you

Well, love, sometimes folks just need something they can scream at

Scream at

I'm the hills in the distance, you see me, can't be me

You need me in half, Lord, I need you completely

Oh, sometimes folks just need something to scream at

-

I ain't bitter 'bout much these days

In some ways, I'm damn lucky to be here

Where the miners stayed in the good old days

Yes, real men used to sleep here

All those roadside graves where my friends still lay

I walk by just to weep here

They say killing time ain't a homicide

But a prayer for a leap year

-

They say killing time ain't a homicide

But a prayer for a leap year

Oh

-

I'm a college kid with my windows down

I'm an astronaut, you're the moon

I stare at you, I sing to you

I'm in Bordertown, I'm on angry ground

I'm a college kid with my windows down

I'm an astronaut, you're the moon

I sing to you, I scream at you

I'll stare at you, I'll sting at you”

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Featured photo by Kaitlyn Hungerford