“Northern Attitude” by Noah Kahan featuring Hozier

"Northern Attitude" landed in 2022 as a single from Stick Season, Noah Kahan's third studio album, and it grew out of a happy accident: Kahan was fooling around with a guitar riff mid-session and the song simply arrived. He wrote and produced it with Gabe Simon, who covers a whole general store of instruments here, from 12-string and mandolin to organ, piano and bass.

What it carries is the cold of Strafford, Vermont, the tiny rural town where Kahan grew up, and the way those endless grey winters taught him to keep his heart shut. The song is his attempt to explain that guardedness, ask for some patience with it, and reach out to anyone raised somewhere equally remote. A year later Hozier joined him for a duet version on the expanded Stick Season (Forever).

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.