While singer-songwriter Noah Kahan‘s slow-burning Stick Season album never quite summited the Billboard 200, the effect of the album’s gradual success can now be seen in the first-week performance of its follow-up, The Great Divide.
Kahan’s new album bows on the Billboard 200 dated May 9 with a stunning 389,000 units, easily securing his first No. 1 on the chart. In addition to marking the biggest streaming week for any album yet in 2026 with its 215 million-plus streams, it marks the biggest entrance for any rock album since 2014, when the Billboard 200 started measuring album performance in equivalent album units.
How huge a deal is this for Kahan? And what else can the industry learn from it? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
1. Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide bows atop the Billboard 200 with 389,000 units — including the biggest single-week streaming total of 2026 — which marks the biggest first-week for a rock album since Billboard started measuring the chart by equivalent album units in 2014. On a scale from 1-10, how big a deal is that first-week performance for Noah Kahan?
Eric Renner Brown: 10! This is about as good a first week as he could have hoped for — I would not have placed money a few months ago on Kahan’s first-week streaming totals eclipsing those for new albums by Bruno Mars, Harry Styles and BTS. I’m sure he and his team are thrilled.
Hannah Dailey: Definitely a 10. I think a No. 1 album was always in the cards for Noah, but 389,000 units is insane. He should be very proud.
Kyle Denis: 10. Noah played his hand perfectly and got a massive No. 1 debut (with equally impressive streaming and pure sales numbers) without compromising his sound or leaning on A-list collaborators. Considering the questionable longevity of many post-pandemic breakouts, these first-week numbers are especially incredible.
Rebecca Milzoff: I’ll say an 8. It’s not a total shocker — I expected it to be pretty big and most likely go top 5. But for Noah, and really a rock-leaning artist like him in 2026, I think the No. 1 debut and those numbers are still a pretty big deal. I mean, Harry Styles’ No. 1 debut this year moved 430,000 units — the fact that Noah is not terribly far behind one of the biggest pop stars in the world is incredible. If there was any doubt around Noah and this album, it was surely related to whether he could replicate the success of Stick Season, which took a long road through concerted releases of extended versions and ultimately got to No. 2 on the chart roughly a year and a half after its release. This pretty resoundingly proves he’s ascended to another level entirely.
Andrew Unterberger: If it’s not a 10, it’ll do until the 10 gets here. Consider this: Olivia Rodrigo, who has four No. 1 Hot 100 debuts to her name, is famous enough to do SNL double duty and is probably the most obvious answer for the most successful and accomplished new pop star of the 2020s, has never posted more than 302,000 units in a week. His album is longer than hers have been, of course, but still — wow.
2. While the numbers put up by The Great Divide are usually reserved for established chart-toppers, Divide is Kahan’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. What’s the biggest reason it was able to post such a stellar first-week number?
Eric Renner Brown: First, it must be said: it’s a long album. Really long. So there is a bit of the stream inflation here that we saw at work in the late ’10s, when seemingly every hip-hop artist was doing 30-track data dumps. However! You still need fans, lots of them, to rack up this many streams, and Kahan’s rapidly expanding audience is who I really attribute this achievement to. He has built up sustained, genuine interest in his music, and is not reaping the benefits.
Hannah Dailey: He did such a great job building his audience as much as he possibly could after Stick Season took off. People couldn’t get enough of that album, and he kept feeding that demand with two different deluxe editions featuring remixes with big-name guest artists. Then, instead of immediately following up the extended Stick Season hype with a brand-new album, he disappeared for more than a year, giving all those new fans plenty of time to miss him before he returned with his first full-length of new material in four years.
Kyle Denis: The Noah Kahan of 2026 is very different than the Noah Kahan of 2022 — and launching The Great Divide with a Mastercard commercial at the Grammys (like SZA and Lady Gaga before him) immediately highlighted his growth as a music celebrity.
He truly played things slow and steady. Kahan stretched out his breakthrough Stick Season era across two calendar years, consistently selling out tours, sharing new versions of familiar fanbase favorites and establishing a network of pop, folk and country collaborators. He could have easily cut that album cycle short to share a brand new record, but he worked hard to cultivate a unique, dependable dynamic with his fanbase, which gave way to the eye-popping venues he’s headlining on his forthcoming stadium tour in support of The Great Divide.
Rebecca Milzoff: This feels like all the time invested in Stick Season — both by Mercury/Republic and Noah himself, on the road especially — paying off. When Stick Season first came out in fall of 2022, he wasn’t a hugely popular artist yet; it turned into a breakthrough moment, and he and his label smartly rode that momentum with the various new collaborations and versions of the album that continued to come out, allowing its trajectory to mirror Noah’s own as he relentlessly toured bigger and bigger venues. By the time his Stick Season era finally came to a close, he was a very different artist than when it began, and well-positioned to launch into a different stratosphere with his next release. The fact that The Great Divide happens to be a really good (and really well-made album) that also feels like a step forward in his artistry certainly helps too, but with the foundation Stick Season laid, I’m not sure it even needed to be quite this good for this to happen.
Andrew Unterberger: Kahan’s been the rare pop star who’s been able to have his overexposure and still seem sorta charming about it — he’s been smart both about taking every opportunity available to him to make Stick Season as big and long an era as it was, and about acknowledging that that is in fact what he was doing, with a self-aware shrug and a smile. Consequently, even if we ever got tired of the album, we never really got sick of him. And we all know who he is now, which is always at least half the battle in itself.
3. “Doors” is the top-performing song from the album’s first week, bowing at No. 9 on the Hot 100. Do you see the song holding as a major breakout hit from the set, or will it recede as the rest of the album likely falls following its debut frame?
Eric Renner Brown: The No. 9 mark feels at least a little related to the song’s placement toward the start of the album. I wouldn’t be surprised if it fell off. But it also reminds me of Kahan’s other big hits, so I could see it sticking around!
Hannah Dailey: I can see “Doors” sticking around for a while. It pairs nicely with Ella Langley’s chart-dominating “Choosin’ Texas,” which has already proved that people are loving tracks about resigning to the fact that your lover is bound to take off on you.
Kyle Denis: It wouldn’t surprise me if “Doors” stuck around, but it is getting a slight cushion thanks to its early placement on the track list. I remember “Dashboard” and “23” sticking out to me on first listen, so I’d love to see those garner some traction. Nonetheless, The Great Divide strikes me as the kind of album that spins out several, long-lasting hits with relatively moderate peaks versus one or two all-conquering smashes.
Rebecca Milzoff: I think it’ll hold, and I also don’t think the rest of the album will necessarily fall! Looking at the discourse around The Great Divide on social media, it feels like this is still a big audience discovery moment for Noah — lots of folks who maybe rolled their eyes at the “Stick Season” supremacy seem to be hearing enough about how good The Great Divide is that they’re at the least listening to it and often becoming Kahan-verts. Surely that will only continue after he plays Saturday Night Live this weekend; it’ll be interesting to see whether he plays “Doors” or throws another potential big single into the mix (I can see “American Cars” or “Standing Still,” a fan favorite, possibly making the climb on the Hot 100).
Andrew Unterberger: I think it’ll hold, though it largely depends on if and when radio gets on board — which it doesn’t for many artists like Kahan, but which it did for “Stick Season.” If he’s just in on radio now, as happens sometimes with artists who get this popular, it could be the kind of run where “Doors” remains a factor on the chart all the way until 2026.
4. Though he’s posting superstar numbers, Noah Kahan doesn’t really sound or feel like too many superstars of recent years. Is there a star artist from slightly longer ago that he reminds you of?
Hannah Dailey: I think the “Where did this dude with the guitar even come from?” quality of Noah’s breakthrough is similar to when Ed Sheeran first made it big. Ed’s music would become more poppy in a way that Noah’s hasn’t, but both of them have signified the rise of a different kind of mainstream male musician – stripped-down, unpolished, known first and foremost for their songwriting rather than extravagant performances – for their respective generations.
Kyle Denis: He honestly reminds me of a pre-Multiply Ed Sheeran sometimes. I also get a bit of Hozier and Paul Simon from him too.
Eric Renner Brown: There’s more to it than this, but Kahan’s success feels like a cross between Mumford & Sons and Ed Sheeran. All the rafter-rattling, boot-stomping rustic vibes of Mumford, but with Sheeran’s earnestness and attention to songcraft. Going back much further, there’s something to all the Springsteen comparisons that Kahan has clearly courted – a prolific, thoughtful singer-songwriter who wears his heart on his sleeve.
Rebecca Milzoff: On a pure artistry level, he makes me think of Paul Simon — the blend of melancholy and humor, the penchant for pop melodies with folk and rock underpinning, the songwriting craft as the foundation for it all, even the close ties to a particular geographic area (though Noah is certainly even more inextricably tied to Vermont than Simon ever was to New York).
But while it’s not an exact apples-to-apples comparison, he increasingly reminds me of Taylor Swift. The first time I saw him live, at Madison Square Garden, seeing his relationship with his fans, the way they hang on every word of his (very wordy) songwriting, and his ability to make a big room feel intimate made me think immediately of what Taylor does so well. I’m seeing a lot of “I’m a Swiftie who now loves Noah Kahan” discourse online, too; a collab between these two surely can’t be too far in the future.
Andrew Unterberger: Due to his unusual career arc, Hozier is somehow both a formative influence on and a peer of Noah Kahan, but their paths to superstar-level cult fandom feel similar. And actually, from more recent times, what about another former collaborator in Zach Bryan? Same sort of thing where it felt like both used piercing songs and a strong personal brand to build a devoted fanbase almost totally outside of the industry’s watchful eye, and both maintain a close connection with those fans that supersedes mainstream whims and core genre ambiguity.
5. What do you think the biggest lesson the rest of the industry can learn from Kahan’s tremendous recent success is?
Hannah Dailey: That it’s OK to take a break. I imagine Noah probably felt a lot of pressure to follow up Stick Season as soon as humanly possible so as not to “waste” any momentum – but instead, he stuck to his guns with his drawn-out Stick Season era before stepping away to assess what he really wanted and make the best album he possibly could. Clearly, that’s paid off.
Kyle Denis: Slow, steady, deliberate fan base engagement does work — and might even spawn better results than constantly chasing short-term payoffs.
Eric Renner Brown: That no style should be off-limits. Kahan offers something distinct from the stomp-clap boom of the early ’10s, but broadly speaking, the music he makes can still trace its lineage back to that. Immediatley before Kahan broke out, that musical fad was considered profoundly uncool – and his conviction and songwriting brought it back. To me, Kahan’s success proves that in 2026 a committed, talented artist can popularize any style.
Rebecca Milzoff: That an artist with serious long-term-career potential isn’t actually created overnight and is worth significant time investment that prioritizes mental health. I highly recommend watching the Netflix documentary Noah Kahan: Out of Body — it’s the rare musician doc that isn’t a tool for self-aggrandizement and takes a very honest, incredibly poignant look at the real mental consequences of catapulting to stardom and contending with still finding joy in making art amid all that. Having seen it, I’m all the more impressed by how The Great Divide happened, and happy to see how patient, and nurturing of his creativity, the community around Noah seems to be.
Andrew Unterberger: Bearded New Englanders with guitars can be pop stars now? Might be another Noah Kahan immediately in that sense, but I think there will be another rock-adjacent artist in the next couple years who comes seemingly out of nowhere to put up Sabrina- and Harry-type numbers. There might be multiple.
