Music

Review

Noah Kahan brings out Lewis Capaldi amongst other special guests at BST Hyde Park

The US singer-songwriter played a headline set packed full of emotion – and surprises


“I played a show in London for 77 people and that was the best day of my life,” says Noah Kahan, standing on the Great Oak stage. He surveys the crowd of approximately 65,000. “There’s a few more than that here tonight.”

Nominated for Best New Artist seven years after his first Spotify release, some would call Kahan’s career a slow burner. Although he tells us that he never had complete faith in it himself, Kahan’s success feels like a sure thing, a star always very much destined to rise. Vocally, he’s powerful and intensely emotive, able to express much with just a note change or a quiver. Lyrically, he straddles that elusive line between commercial and poetic – his boot-stamping choruses are easy enough to sing back to him, but there is a real deftness to the way Kahan tackles the topic of being alive. Exploding on social media with his third album, 2022’s Stick Season, he’s steadily grown the fan base that it feels he’s long deserved -–and it’s led him here, to play the biggest show of his life.

“I’m gonna cry a few times,” he says. “I might piss myself.” Thankfully, he doesn’t.

Kahan radiates ‘thrilled to be here’ energy. He has that much sought after spark of authenticity that keeps his audience robustly on side, whether he’s playing new or less familiar material, migrating to a smaller stage amongst the general admission crowds for an acoustic set (“It’s like the Eras tour but the only era is depression”) or walking out in a Chelsea shirt for his encore – although admittedly he does get more than a few boos for that last one. He’s constantly quipping – a command to put our hands up is followed by “Give me all your money!” and he introduces his most famous track (‘Stick Season’) with: “Let’s get sticky.” But it’s a show cut through with pure emotion, the kind of nostalgia and homesickness that Kahan’s tracks evoke, even for those who’ve only travelled one tube stop to be here. It’s no wonder that Kahan warns he may cry – there’s few of us watching who aren’t choked up at one point or another.

Kahan’s fast-moving show also involves several surprise guests, who join him onstage over the course of the evening. Opener Gracie Abrams returns to the stage early in Kahan’s set to duet him on ‘Everything, Everywhere’ – their blend is superb – and up-and-comer Gigi Perez lends her rich vocals to ‘Call Your Mom’. During the encore, Lewis Capaldi appears, in a Kahan-style French braid wig, to duet on ‘Northern Attitude’. The two are well matched in big, beautiful voices and whilst a total surprise to those watching, the pairing makes a good degree of sense.

But the evening’s most memorable guest isn’t up on stage with him – she’s watching from the crowd. When Kahan introduces ‘Call Your Mom’, he also introduces his own mother, who stands on the viewing platform to look out over the crowd and is moved to tears as all of Hyde Park wave back at her. Kahan keeps his eyes on her as he sings. She knows every word – and so do the 65,000 people below her. Surely there’s no better way to say, “Look mum, I made it.”