Singer-songwriter Noah Kahan is backing up Chappell Roan after she went viral this week for recording several aggressive photographers who wouldn’t leave her alone in Paris. Kahan stood by her, posting an Instagram screenshot of an article recounting the incident and later a video sharing his support.
Roan made headlines on Monday after she turned the camera on several people who were following her around as she tried to go to dinner. She started recording them instead, saying in the video, “I’m just trying to go to dinner, and I’ve asked these people several times to get away from me.” In the clip, which traveled across social media and made several headlines, she continues, “All of you, I’m asking you kindly to please leave me alone and stop following me and harassing me. No, I’m not gonna sign. This is what it’s like, if you were wondering how it is.”
Kahan shared a headline from Billboard explaining what happened and wrote, “Maybe they should just leave her alone? Also those dudes saying, ‘I’m a huge fan,’ following her around are scalpers and are as bad as the paparazzi. Fuck ’em all.”
In a video, he expanded his thoughts. Some viewers who saw the video had interpreted the moment as Roan being rude to her fans, but Kahan explained that often, people asking for photos aren’t genuine followers. “These people literally find out where you’re staying, where you’re flying into, where your team, family, whoever is staying, and they are clearly not your fans,” he says in the video. “They just sit outside places and try to guilt you into signing shit so they can sell it, and they trick people like you who are just watching the video and don’t know what’s going on into thinking that someone is being rude to their fans when really they’re just manipulating you.”
He went on: “They’re scummy, they’re manipulative, they’re parasitic, and, yeah, fuck ‘em.”
Kahan has been busy this year working on his upcoming fourth album, The Great Divide. The LP is expected to come out on April 24 and is a follow-up to 2022’s Stick Season, which earned him a Best New Artist nomination at the 2024 Grammy Awards.
There’s no immediate resolution in any of this. There’s no surrender either — and a lot of great escape. White’s slide guitar in “Dollar Bill” sounds like a National Steel on steroids until the solo, when it turns into what seems like a theremin gone postal. “I Can’t Believe What I’m Hearing” has a great pop-wise chorus closer to the Pretty Things than Son House. And don’t miss White’s wry aside to the White Stripes’ old creation myth in the second verse of “G.O.D.,” on the way to the real business at hand. “Well, it’s the beginning of the world now,” he declares at the song’s end. “Let’s do it all over again.”
