In “Northern Attitude”, Noah Kahan recalls his childhood home and grapples with the solitude he felt living in rural Vermont. The song, which opens his 2022 album Stick Season, is about discovery, routine, and endurance. Moreover, it’s a vivid description of small-town life, a yearning to escape, and the pull one feels to remain where they’re raised.
Behind the Lyrics
Kahan begins with small talk. The kind of insignificant questions we ask one another about the significant things in our lives. But the questions, almost in passing, reduce them to conversational space fillers.
It speaks to the sentiment that there’s nothing much going on around here. Not much happens in this town, but more of the same.
Breathing in, breathing out.
How you been? You settled down?
You feeling right? You feeling proud?
How are your kids? Where are they now?
Here, Kahan sings about routines and the predictable loss that awaits us all. But the landscape of a hometown doesn’t change. Its familiarity offers comfort. Especially when losing loved ones. Co-written with Kahan’s producer, Gabe Simon, “Northern Attitude” also reveals one’s manner. So for those who leave home, the home never really leaves them.
You build a boat, you build a life,
You lose your friends, you lose your wife.
You settle into routine.
Where are you? What does it mean?
Raised on Little Light
Kahan told The Sound Café, “I was singing about isolation, about loneliness, about trying to assess who you are and where your life is going, and about accepting that and opening yourself up to love either way.”
He described his time in Vermont as “one of the loneliest places to live in the world.” With “Northern Attitude”, he said, “I wanted to write a song about that loneliness, and what it means to the way we exist and the way we approach relationships.”
If I get too close and I’m not how you hoped,
Forgive my Northern attitude, oh, I was raised out in the cold.
If the sun don’t rise till the summertime,
Forgive my Northern attitude, oh, I was raised on little light.
Photo by Christopher Polk/Penske Media via Getty Images