Noah Kahan and Sam Fender’s new version of Stick Season’s “Homesick” brings the song’s nostalgia and yearning to a wider audience.
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Stream: “Homesick” – Noah Kahan, Sam Fender
With the release of his third album Stick Season (released in 2022), Vermont singer/songwriter Noah Kahan jumped from small(-ish) indie musician to a famous name in the folk music world. Now regularly sitting in the top charts worldwide, Kahan’s music is reaching even bigger circles as he re-records and releases singles off his album in collaboration with other artists, both in and outside of the folk genre.
The songs featured on Stick Season draw from memories and experiences that make up many people’s East Coast American experience. Part of what makes Kahan’s music so compelling is the shared feelings and stories that listeners can commiserate with inside of his lyrics. The collaborations with other artists widen the range of people who can relate to his music.
“Homesick,” Stick Season’s twelfth track, especially pulls on the heartstrings of those who listen to it and find their own stories within the music. The song alternates between being “sick of” one’s hometown, and “sick for” the same place. Usage of the word “homesick” alternates between the two feelings, with a duality that shows Kahan’s lyrical genius.
Two months since you got back
How have you been and are you bored yet?
The weather ain’t been bad
If you’re into masochistic bullshit
And every photograph
That’s taken here is from the summer
Some guy won Olympic gold
Eight years ago, a distance runner
And that makes a lot of sense
This place is such great motivation
For anyone trying to move
The f* away from hibernation
Kahan draws upon references to a childhood hometown on the East Coast of the United States. With lines such as, “Well, I’m tired of dirt roads named after high school friends’ grandfathers, the mother****ers here still don’t know they caught the Boston bombers,” and the even more iconic, “I’m mean because I grew up in New England,” Kahan tells a story of a town you hate when you’re in it, but can’t stop missing once you leave.
“That song is definitely the most negative portrayal of a small town,” Kahan said in an interview with Atwood Magazine. “I wanted there to be individuality and a sense of love toward the negative in that too, and I like that line because I think it gets it across.”
I would leave if only I could find a reason
I’m mean because I grew up in New England
I got dreams but I can’t make myself believe them
Spend the rest of my life with what could have been
And I will die in the house that I grew up in
I’m homesick
While many people can relate to that same feeling about their own hometown, and many towns in the world do fit those descriptions, “Homesick” now applies to a much wider audience through its re-recording featuring British indie rock artist and 2019 Brit Awards winner, Sam Fender.
Following recent collaborations with Gracie Abrams, Hozier, Kacey Musgraves, and Lizzie McAlpine, Fender was a good choice for a feature on Kahan’s song. With very similar folk sounds and rock undertones, the two musicians’ distinctive styles blend well together for a result that doesn’t drown out either’s personal artistry, perspective, and message.
Coming from England, the common clichés of an American small town don’t apply to Fender, nor to the wider international audience that Kahan is beginning to reach. Adding lyrics for the new version of “Homesick,” released January 19th, 2024 via Mercury Records/Republic Records, Fender offers a fresh perspective that holds the same emotions as Kahan’s story does.
“Well I grew up in the fallout of the riots in the ‘90s,” Fender sings in the second verse of “Homesick.” Fender grew up in northern England, and like many millennials of the time, came of age right after the end of the working class riots that happened across the United Kingdom throughout the 1990s.
In fact, most people of the same age demographic as Fender and Kahan have the same, or a similar story. The ‘90s were filled with social action protests that turned into rioting across the world. It was a pivotal point in most of that generation’s memories of their own hometowns.
Fender’s second verse also speaking more directly to an international audience : “I stared at that hallowed ocean as if to pick a fight for the dreams my old man dreamt for me lay on the other side.” Fender has shared that this lyric is intended to depict yearning for something more, off in a far and unreachable land. This is in the same vein as Kahan’s original lyrics, but set in a different country.
Not only can those from the United Kingdom like Fender find commiseration in this idea, but also so can most other people with a passion to explore. The feeling of being so sick of a place that you want to leave, and then missing it so much it makes you sick once you do, is a harsh reality of many people.
I would leave if only I could find a reason
I’m mean because I grew up in New England
I got dreams but I can’t make myself believe them
Spend the rest of my life with what could have been
And I will die in the house that I grew up in
I’m homesick
The original “Homesick” beautifully illustrates this duality, and in the re-recorded version with Sam Fender, the song fulfills its purpose to even more people through a diversification of perspectives on a shared feeling and universal human experience.
As the song grows, so does Noah Kahan through Billboard chart hits and skyrocketing streaming numbers. Whatever Kahan chooses to produce next will undoubtedly hit home for fans new and old.
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:: connect with Noah Kahan here ::
Stream: “Homesick” – Noah Kahan, Sam Fender
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© Aysia Marotta
© Aysia Marotta
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