‘Dan’ is arguably the most important song on Noah Kahan's 2026 album, The Great Divide, at least in terms of the overarching narrative. Throughout the album, Kahan reflects on a fractured relationship with a childhood friend, and as we reach the final song on the album, ‘Dan’, it becomes clear who he's been singing about.

‘Dan’ is a real person in Kahan's life, but he doesn't make it clear who exactly it is - and quite frankly, it's not for us to speculate. For listeners, ‘Dan’ simply represents an old friend that knows our deepest secrets and has seen us at our best and our worst, with Kahan concluding the album with an ode to how much he cherishes this friendship.

Sonically, ‘Dan’ is one of the most uplifting songs on The Great Divide, with Kahan and Aaron Dessner crafting a sumptuously cushioning the lead vocals with a lush instrumental. Kahan's vocals are layered throughout the song, giving them a warm, comforting tone as he sings lovingly and wistfully to his longstanding friend.

The composition is bright and optimistic, with the rousing strings combining with the joyful acoustic guitar riff and the galvanising drums. It concludes the album on a hopeful note.

Throughout ‘Dan’, it's not 100% clear whether Kahan is imagining spending time with his best friend again in a dream-life reverie, or whether he really is side by side with him.

Kahan paints a bucolic picture of the moments he gets to hang out with Dan, an intentionally marked shift from the typically bleak and melancholic portrayal of the Vermont countryside. It suggests that the despair he feels when he sees this landscape and the weather stems more from his own feelings that he's imposing on his environment, rather than there being anything inherently depressing about Vermont.

There's a touching reference to ‘Carlo’ in the line, “Think I stood right here back when Carlo died / Said I hated the way I made it all about me”. Kahan penned ‘Carlo's Song’ as an homage to his friend that died on his 2019 album, Busyhead, and the lyric here appears to imply Dan criticised him for making the death about him.

There have clearly been ups and down in Kahan and Dan's relationship over the years, and he alludes to many of them in this track. But ultimately, their love for one another as best friends triumphs over all the adversity they face during the album's narrative.

Ahead of the record's release, Kahan stated that ‘Dan’ was the offering he was most looking forward to sharing with fans, as well as stating that he'd want his friend Dan to speak at his funeral, underlining how this is a pivotal song on The Great Divide.

As part of his official The Great Divide album announcement, Kahan shed some illuminating light on what this body of work represents to him, “From a long silence forms a divide, a great expanse demanding attention. I stare across it. I see old friends, my father, my mother, my siblings, my younger self, the great state of Vermont. I want to scream these feelings, to gesticulate wildly at the figures on the other side, but my voice has grown hoarse and muted after years of climbing a ladder towards the wild, spiraling dreams that have materialized in front of me”.

The Vermont native offers insight into his creative process, “Instead, I wrote them down next to a piano in Nashville, next to a pond in Guilford Vermont, in a legendary studio in upstate New York, on a farm with a firetower in Only, Tennessee. The songs are the words I would say if I could. They are the fears I dance with in the moments before I drift off to sleep. The music here is my best attempt to delve deeper into the people, places, and feelings that have made me who I am. I am grateful for all of it, for all of you, for listening to them, if you choose to do so”.

Kahan has repeatedly touched on how challenging he found the writing process for The Great Divide, as the pressure to outdo his magnum opus, Stick Season, weighed on him, something he explored in-depth in his 2026 Netflix documentary, Out of Body. During an interview with Zach Sang, he reflected on how he managed to overcome his writers’ block, “It was a hugely cathartic experience. I had been so stressed and so lost and was literally thinking about quitting and going to work at my golf course as a divot repair person”, adding, “The Great Divide for me, I’m so proud of, because not only did it come out of a time of great pressure and expectation. I felt like I was fully able to say what I wanted to say in the songs”.

“Everybody’s asleep, let’s talk about him

Let’s talk about high school, talk about death

Talk about the long ride home from the grave

How we were too fucked up on Thum’s birthday

Seasonal bugs in a canvas tent

Seasonal friendships I can see the road end

You're appealing to the parts that you know I hold dear

You’ve been the best five minutes of a shitty whole year

-

And I’m so glad we’re here

-

'Cause I’m with my best friend Dan now

Camping on the county line

Hand around a Miller Lite

Waiting for the sun to rise

Couple of hometown heroes

Fighting over politics

Sitting and remembering

Young men from different sides

And we’re so alone

Most of the time

Most of the time, we don’t have anyone

Where do we go, when we die

I wouldn’t mind right here

I wouldn’t mind at all

-

Through the dying light of a flashlight lens

You tried to tell me how unfair it is

That I have what I have and you got what you got

Said I’d give it all back if I could, I cannot

Loon calls pierce through the violent sky

Think I stood right here back when Carlo died

Said I hated the way I made it all about me

And every day from back then is like a bad old dream

-

And I can’t fall asleep

-

But I’m with my best friend Dan now

Camping on the county line

Hand around a Miller Lite

Waiting for the sun to rise

Couple of hometown heroes

Fighting over politics

Sitting and remembering

Young men from different sides

And we’re so alone

Most of the time

Most of the time, we don’t have anyone

Where do we go, when we die

I wouldn’t mind right here

I wouldn’t mind at all

-

See the wasps

Hit the water

And drown

See the lightning

Light the world

And land on Orange County ground

Flip a rock

See the bugs

Sleepin’ sound

Hey, that’s us

You and I

Will be found

-

We ain’t far from my house

-

I’m with my best friend Dan now

Camping on the county line

Hand around a Miller Lite

Waiting for the sun to rise

Couple of hometown heroes

Fighting over politics

Sitting and remembering

Young men from different sides

And we’re so alone

Most of the time

Most of the time, we don’t have anyone

Where do we go, when we die

I wouldn’t mind right here

No, I wouldn’t mind at all

-

I wouldn’t mind

I wouldn’t mind right here,

No I wouldn’t mind at all

I wouldn’t mind at all

-

Everybody’s asleep, let’s talk about it

Let’s talk about high school and talk about death

Before the moment tries to disappear

Don’t the sky look pretty up here?”

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Noah Kahan

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