Overall rating: 4.5/5
Noah Kahan wraps up his album Stick Season with its final song “Forever.”
“Forever,” released on Feb. 9, debuted on the final iteration of singer/songwriter Noah Kahan’s third album Stick Season. While the original record has already been updated once since its initial release, Stick Season (Forever) contains the contents of the original album, the bonus tracks from Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever), all eight of Kahan’s recent collaborations and the heavily anticipated “Forever.”
First teased on the artist’s TikTok on Oct. 10 of last year, “Forever” was immediately a hit. In fact, upon its release, the song quickly became Kahan’s most-streamed track. There is a good reason for it too.
“Forever,” a foot-stomping folk song, is one of Kahan’s happier tracks. While the singer is known for his heart-wrenching ballads about love, loss and the trials and tribulations of family life, “Forever” is a nice change of pace.
Although the song starts slowly, the opening lines, comprised of just quiet acoustic guitar and Kahan’s warm vocals, the track starts to grow. After the first verse, the track builds with the addition of a three-part vocal harmony made up of Kahan’s main vocal line, a deeper harmonizing line and a higher, falsetto-sounding line. This vocal harmony continues for much of the rest of the song, filling in any sonic gaps and making the track sound fuller.
Kahan does all of this without the use of any grandiose riffs or over-the-top vocalization, allowing the song to feel authentic.
The song does an expert job of building, adding layer upon layer of instrumentation before finally taking off exactly halfway through the song. With the inclusion of the mandolin and the constant thump of the kick drum, “Forever” moves from a slow, simple ballad to an upbeat, folk-style song that rivals those of Mumford and Sons.
Lyrically, the song tells the age-old story of young love. The lyrics “I won’t be alone for the rest of my life / I’ll build a boat for when the river gets high / And I’ll meet a girl in the heat of July” repeat throughout the song, highlighting Kahan’s hopeful outlook on the future of the relationship. He goes on to sing “When I hold her close, I might loosen my grip / But I won’t ever let her go,” furthering this belief. The connection between him and his partner will go on until the end of time.
“Forever,” said Kahan, “is a long time… the word ‘forever’ used to terrify me… I hate finality, there is too much uncertainty and boredom affiliated with ‘the rest of time’.” This theme is more than prevalent in the musician’s body of work, constantly poking at the fear like a bump you aren’t sure is going to bruise. But in this conclusion to the Stick Season saga, Kahan has “found forever to mean there is limitless possibility. There is so much joy in the world, waiting to be found.”
“Forever” highlights this positive change in Kahan’s outlook expertly. Hopefully, we can expect more songs like this from the singer going forward into the new year.