(photo by Patrick McCormack)

The Noah Kahan Effect: Why We Crave Gut-Wrenching Music

[embed]You’re Gonna Go Far- Noah Kahan

As I anxiously await Noah Kahan’s new album, I am reminded of how much I enjoy sad music. I’ve heard time and time again that music reflects your mood; listening to sad music should put you in a sad mood. The logic always made sense to me, until listening to You’re Gonna Go Far by Noah Kahan. This song plays endlessly on TikTok and Instagram around graduation time, when students move off to college. This quickly became my top song on my Spotify Wrapped in 2024. He sings about the mixed feelings of moving away from home. He tells us to do bigger and better things; we have to take that crucial step. He sings:

So, pack up your car, put a hand on your heart Say whatever you feel, be wherever you are We ain’t angry at you, love You’re the greatest thing we’ve lost

This song evokes feelings of nostalgia, pride, growing up, and some mixture of joyful sadness. Joyful Sadness definitely sounds like an oxymoron — two words that contradict each other. In this case they actually coincide with each other. Then I realized all his songs have this feature. How can something so sad actually give us feelings of joy? What makes us keep coming back? This is what I like to call the Noah Kahan Effect.

photo by Patrick McCormack

Who is Noah Kahan?

Born on January 1st, 1997, from Vermont to the Grammy stage, Noah Kahan is a singer-songwriter. He is best known for his album Stick Season. This album is an ode to growing up in New England, with lyrics about his struggling mental health. He started up The Busyhead Project, a mental health initiative that aims to de-stigmatize and provide resources to those in need. Noah Kahan has been very vocal about his own mental health struggles and journey growing up. He hopes to give access to mental healthcare for all. He’s also known to have brought a resurgence of folk pop to the music industry.

Obtained from Atwood Magazine

What’s so appealing about sadness?

Sadness is often associated with an unpleasant and unwanted emotion. In the framework of our mind, sadness results from a perceived loss. It’s a complex state of low energy, social withdrawal, low self-worth, and even a limited horizon of the future (Sachs et al., 2015). Then why is it that drama-filled tragedies of heartache and despair in blockbuster films end up being some of the most successful of all time? Do we find enjoyment in watching other people’s tragedies?

The concept of feeling joy from sadness can be traced back all the way to Aristotle (an ancient Greek philosopher). He explains that, “we take pleasure not in the terrible events as such, nor in our own emotional states, but in the tragedy in which tragic events are presented to us,” (Schaper, pg. 138–139, 1968). Aristotle points out that humans like to minimize the sadness in their personal lives, but find it pleasurable in an aesthetic context. In a 2014 online survey, “results show 4 different rewards of music-evoked sadness: reward of imagination, emotion regulation, empathy, and no ‘real-life’ implications” (Taruffi & Koelsch, 2014). Their research established that it was actually the nostalgia — more than the feelings of sadness — that was evoked. They concluded that listening to sad music can lead to beneficial emotional effects instead of causing self-pity.

Photo by Scott Newto

Does nostalgia revoke positive or negative emotions?

Nostalgia is often associated with feelings of sadness or longing. In a study about the effects of nostalgia, results showed that ‘in addition to being a source of social connectedness, nostalgia increased participants’ perceived capacity to provide emotional support to others” (Wildschut et al., 2010). Nostalgia was also shown to be responsible for boosting self-esteem, self-positivity, increasing meaning of life, encouraging help-seeking, and enhancing psychological health and well-being (Yang et al., 2022). Nostalgia actually can revoke positive emotions. These positive emotions make us want to experience it more, which can be a reason we can’t stop listening to Noah Kahan. He can be seen as an embodiment of nostalgia; his songs have themes of home, bittersweet emotions, fans’ resonance, and through loss of a familiar small-town way of life.

Lyrics leading to validation

Noah Kahan’s music has soothingly catchy beats. The lyrics resonate with the listeners as they are empowered through his storytelling of mental health in an authentically real way. Whether it’s:

And I’ll dream each night of some version of you that I might not have, but I did not lose (Stick Season)

Feels like I’ve been ready for you to come home for so long that I didn’t think to ask you where you’d gone (Orange Juice)

I don’t like that when they threw me in the car I gave your name as my emergency phone call. Honey, it rang and rang, even the cops thought you were wrong for hangin’ up (Dial Drunk)

Now I know your name, but not who you are. It’s all okay, there ain’t a drop of bad blood, it’s all my love (All My Love)

Don’t let this darkness fool you. All lights turned off can be turned on (Call Your Mom)

It’s safe to assume that hearing the lyrics does cause a sense of “pain,” but not because we are reminded of all the hurt in our lives. We feel pain due to someone finally said the quiet part out loud. Hearing someone express something you’ve been feeling but never had the words for is such an empowering and validating experience. We have a psychological need to feel valued and accepted which derives from the desire for human connection. Validation can turn into a form of addiction. Humans love to have external approval. Every time we feel validated, we get a boost of dopamine.

Obtained from PsychoTricks

Whats the big deal with dopamine?

The neurotransmitter dopamine has a crucial role in motivational control, what is perceived as good and bad, and choosing actions to gain the good things and avoid the bad things (Wildschut et al., 2010). Dopamine is produced in the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) and is released into multiple areas of the brain. One area it releases to is the Nucleus Accumbens. Once activated, it could make you do anything and is one of the key players in addiction. The VTA is triggered by a reward-sensing cue and goes into reinforced patterns of learning. If something is “better” than expected, your dopamine goes up and vice versa. When you hear something that is “validating,” your dopamine levels go up; when you hear something you disagree with, your dopamine levels go down.

Listening to Noah Kahan’s album — hearing one validating lyric after the other — puts you in a state of high dopamine. This reinforces the behavior and makes you want to do it (listen to his music) again. Maybe you listen to Noah Kahan every day. After a few months, it’s not as satisfactory anymore and you start to skip some songs. Repeatedly being exposed to the same things stops your dopamine levels from “spiking” like they used to. The action became habitual and routine, meaning you would need more of the same thing to feel the same effects. This is why artists make new albums: because people eventually get tired of hearing the old ones (and to make more money). Taking a break from Noah Kahan (and starting to listen to him again after a few months) may refuel those huge surges of dopamine again. This is due to you having forgotten what it was like to experience Noah Kahan.

Obtained from Amity Collection

Tying it all together: The Noah Kahan Effect

Noah Kahan is a brilliant lyricist who has built a community of people who relate to and appreciate his music. Through his wholesome, authentic, humble presenting self, his vulnerability has touched the hearts of many. Through the aesthetic experience he has curated, his fans get a dopamine hit through feelings of validation. This eventually leads to a version of longing or craving for his music. The fans then listen to his music on repeat, being reminded of the beautiful and harmonious music contrasting with his deep lyrics. Through every season, his fans keep listening (with years and important life milestones occurring all throughout). All of a sudden, you hear a Noah Kahan song that’s nostalgic of your life when you first heard this song. It brings you more of an attachment, as it’s the closest thing you have to being back in that original moment — and the cycle continues. That cycle sums up the Noah Kahan Effect.

Photo by Nina Westervelt

Conclusions

At the end of the day, we all experience music differently and have different backgrounds that affect the way we perceive music and sadness. As Noah Kahan fans (including myself) await his new album, we are awaiting a new wave of validation and brutally honest lyrics for us to relate to.

As I’m trapped in the cycle of Noah Kahan, he reminds us that we’ll all be here forever (You’re gonna go far). We are all contributing to this validation-seeking and reminiscing loop together.

References

APA PsycNet. (n.d.). https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2010-05457-004

Bromberg-Martin, E. S., Matsumoto, M., & Hikosaka, O. (2010). Dopamine in motivational control: rewarding, aversive, and alerting. Neuron, 68(5), 815–834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.11.022

Mulroy, C. (2024, February 1). Meet Noah Kahan, the Grammy best new artist nominee making his mark in the folk-pop genre. USA TODAY. https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/01/25/who-is-noah-kahan/72352861007/

Sachs, M. E., Damasio, A., & Habibi, A. (2015). The pleasures of sad music: a systematic review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 404. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00404

Schaper, E. (1968, April). Aristotle’s Catharsis and Aesthetic Pleasure. JSTOR. Retrieved November 16, 2025, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2217511?seq=1

Taruffi, L., & Koelsch, S. (2014). The Paradox of Music-Evoked Sadness: an online survey. PLoS ONE, 9(10), e110490. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110490

The Busyhead project. (n.d.). The Busyhead Project. https://www.busyheadproject.org/

Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Routledge, C., Arndt, J., & Cordaro, F. (2010). Nostalgia as a repository of social connectedness: The role of attachment-related avoidance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(4), 573–586. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017597

Yang, Z., Wildschut, T., Izuma, K., Gu, R., Luo, Y. L. L., Cai, H., & Sedikides, C. (2022, May 13). Patterns of brain activity associated with nostalgia: a social-cognitive neuroscience perspective. Oxford Academic. Retrieved November 16, 2025, from https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/17/12/1131/6585517?login=true