Noah Kahan’s career is taking off, and he is taking full advantage of the attention the world is giving him. Since releasing the deluxe version of his newest album, “Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever),” Kahan has come out with multiple collaborative efforts with other popular artists of today. Kahan has done “Call Your Mom” with Lizzy McAlpine, “Dial Drunk” with Post Malone and most recently “She Calls Me Back” with Kacey Musgraves. Each of these artists represents a different music genre, giving Kahan the opportunity to reach multiple audiences and further expand his music and his name. As a die-hard Noah Kahan fan myself, I don’t know how to feel about all of the collaborations. While I can see from a marketing standpoint that what Kahan is doing is very strategic, I also can’t help but feel like it is all a little excessive.  

Compared to Kahan’s collaboration with Post Malone, I do think “She Calls Me Back” with Musgraves is a much more valuable piece of work. I really appreciated how Musgraves and Kahan added new lyrics to the song, making it take on the role of call and response. The original “She Calls Me Back” could be viewed as a love song or letter where Kahan is expressing his feelings to a woman he has a lot of questions for. Kahan was clearly in his head about this girl and needed to pour his feelings into a song in order to fully express himself, with possible hopes of better understanding and maybe salvaging the romance at hand. Musgrave plays the role of the woman in question and, with her subtle country twang, responds to Kahan’s original lyrics with fresh, new ones.

The reason I like this EP more than his other collaborations is because the original song was already begging for a duet based on its initial lyrics. There was space to further play out the song and add to the story, which is exactly what Kahan and Musgraves did together. Kahan’s collaborations with Malone and McAlpine sound nice — anyone will sound good singing next to Kahan — but are less necessary and therefore play into giving off this overindulgent mindset. 

Maybe I am being an overprotective fan, wanting to keep his music purely authentic, not quite ready to share him with the whole world yet. But isn’t that what we want for our favorite artists? For them to be successful and achieve their biggest dreams? I do want this for Kahan, and I have no doubt that this is the case for him, as he is already dominating stages across the country and beyond. I just want him to stay as true to himself and his music as possible (and maybe cut back on the collabs for a little bit).