Overall Album Rating: 10/10

If you know Noah Kahan, you know he has a way of writing songs that feel like an emotional punch to the gut. Kahan has built his music around brutally honest storytelling — small-town life, change, mental health, and relationships — and Stick Season (Forever) was the album that made the rest of the world finally pay attention. 

The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs is no different; Kahan just continues doing what he does best: emotionally wrecking his listeners with the kind of raw lyricism that has always defined his music. 

This album is about people: the ones who leave marks on you, the ones you can’t stop thinking about, the ones you’re not sure how to let go of, and sometimes, yourself. What gives it layers is that not every song is told from Kahan’s perspective; some feel like they’re coming from the people around him, reflecting and giving voice to how others see him. Part of what makes it so painful is that the lyrics have a way of meaning something slightly different to everyone who hears them. Noah himself has leaned into this online, joking with fans about how he was about to start a “sad girl summer.” 

The album originally came out with 17 tracks, but hours later Kahan released The Last of the Bugs version with four more. For big fans though, some of these songs already felt familiar since Kahan had been teasing and performing them in livestreams, TikToks, and concerts long before the album actually dropped. Personally, we found this a no-skip album — start to finish, all 21 songs are just that good. That said, some songs hit harder than others, and it felt wrong to give everything the same score, so here’s our song-by-song rating!:

*Because there are 21 songs to get through and we apparently have a lot of opinions, we’re splitting this ranking into 2 parts. This first installment covers tracks 1-10, Part 2 coming soon! 

** = Bonus Track

     1. “End of August” — 10/10

“Late August angst and a pointless night / Oh, and the feelin’ of being alive / For the first time in a long time” 

The first song on the album, “End of August,” begins with crickets and bugs chirping in the background, a small detail that immediately pulls you into the scene. The melody evolves throughout the song, shifting from a gentle piano into a surging guitar that builds until you’re singing at the top of your lungs with all the windows down. The layered humming harmonies add to its echoey, nostalgic atmosphere, while also sending us back to projects like Stick Season and Cape Elizabeth. The lyrics capture that specific sense of standing at the end of something and already missing it before it’s gone. Between the crickets in the background and the swelling melody, it feels like a late-summer night you already know you’re going to miss someday. In our opinion, it was truly the perfect way to start the album. 

     2. “Doors” — 10/10

“Have you ever stared directly at the sun? / Have you ever shared some closeness, so exposed / To have it spit back by someone?”

“Doors” immediately opens with an uptempo, drum-driven beat and urgent acoustic guitar. As the chorus hits, the layers start building in guitar and intensity, until it explodes into the second verse, where Kahan is practically yelling. Lyrically, the song is about the fear of being truly seen and then abandoned for it — a fear we think many people share. Kahan keeps showing the people he loves doors out of his life, listing every reason they should leave, ultimately self-sabotaging himself as protection from the pain of rejection. We find that it’s another relatable song that’s easy to scream along to. 

     3. “American Cars” — 9/10

“’Cause, honey, we’re fragile, you’ve always been so tough / You know that I miss you, you always come runnin’ back / Whenever I ask, whenever I ask”

“American Cars” is one of those songs that sticks with you well beyond the borders of your headphones. The lyrics detail the complex dynamic of leaning on someone who always shows up, even when you think you’re asking for too much. What makes it stand out to us is the guitar-driven, mostly-steady tempo that holds throughout, subtly reflecting the person who’s always there when needed. The only reason it doesn’t quite reach a 10/10 in our opinion is that some songs on this album are just slightly better, which on a record this strong is hardly a criticism. 

     4. “Downfall” — 10/10

“Roadkill fawn, you said, ‘How sad / Left to rot alonе like that’ / You state a feelin’ like a fact / I’m glad you lеft, but you’ll be back”

“Downfall” begins quietly, with a steady repeating chord progression and a soft drum beat underneath. As the chorus hits, more acoustic layers come in and Kahan’s voice rises with them, satisfying vocal runs interwoven throughout — we may not be professional singers, but we can sure try to sing along. It’s an emotionally complicated song (what’s new?) about rooting for someone’s downfall not out of cruelty, but because you want them back. There’s also a quiet Easter egg buried in the lyrics: “call me when the bugs don’t die,” a callback to track #1, “End of August,” that frames the whole song as a wish for a world that never changes. 

     5. ** “Lighthouse” — 8/10

“But I look out / At the wreckage of you / For as long as there’s light / For as long as you last”

The first of the four bonus tracks, “Lighthouse” is gentle, slow, synth-driven, and almost eerily peaceful. The melody slowly adds guitar to it while staying reflective, mirroring the meaning behind the song: reminiscing about someone who was never meant to stay, yet hoping that they come back. Fans have interpreted the song in a few different ways (one of the things that makes Kahan’s music so sentimental), but one connection we do agree with is its tie to “Halloween” from Stick Season, a song about trying to move on from someone while still feeling haunted by what they left behind. The second we heard “wreckage of you,” our minds immediately went back to the line “But the wreckage of you, I no longer reside in,” because apparently one repeated phrase is all it takes to send us into a full lyrical-analysis spiral. Very normal behavior, of course. While “Halloween” seems to be about leaving the wreckage behind, “Lighthouse” looks back at it, making the bonus track feel like it’s returning to the same emotional aftermath from a different angle. We love how much meaning the song holds, but we believe its slowness, despite being intentional, ultimately lowers it to an 8/10 compared to other songs on the album. 

     6. “Paid Time Off” — 7/10

“A pack of cigarettes and a round of golf, make a livin’ workin’ for the paid time off”

This song takes something as basic and sterile as “paid time off” and turns it into a metaphor for burnout, exhaustion, and needing space from your own struggles. The song starts out soft and quiet, a barely-there guitar with no drums, before the chorus kicks in with a full guitar and a distinctly Appalachian tune that feels like a completely different song. The folk-twang of the melody versus the heaviness of the lyrics lying beneath is part of what makes this song so interesting. It isn’t trying to be overly dramatic or polished, adding that dash of realism to the mix. However, while bluegrass influence runs through a lot of Kahan’s music, this one leans into it more heavily than usual, which caught us off guard and took some getting used to. It’s one of those songs that doesn’t immediately grab you, but it’s been growing on us with every listen; the 7/10 is in equal part caused by the unfamiliar sound and the sheer amount of exceptional songs that make this one dull in comparison. 

     7. ** “Staying Still” — 10/10

“Never mind, never mind, oh, forget about it / I’ll be good, I’ll be fine, I can laugh about it / I try to keep on starting over”

Of the four bonus tracks, “Staying Still” was by far the most anticipated. Kahan had been teasing it on his ‘secret’ TikTok account since April 1st, 2026, which sent fans into a panic thinking it was a prank — and when the official tracklist dropped without it, that panic turned into heartbreak. Getting it on The Last of the Bugs version felt like everything fans had been hoping for. Its popularity, in large part, had been due to its theme of being the one who’s always expected to be fine, always left behind. The song starts at a medium pace before shifting into the chorus, where the guitar takes on a staccato stop-start strumming that gives the song a desperate energy. The bridge intensifies from a falsetto into something fully powerful, with a sustained note on “over” around the 3:40 mark that continues underneath the next chorus, which has become one of our favorite moments on the album. The melody already makes the song stand out, but lyrics like “I’ll be good, I’ll be fine” push it to a 10/10 for us because they feel like something we’ve all had to tell ourselves before we fully believed it. 

     8. “The Great Divide” — 10/10

“I heard nothing but the bass in every ballad that you’d play / While you swore to God the singer read your mind”

The titular track and first single of the album, “The Great Divide” arrived in January 2026 and immediately made it clear to us that this album was going to be something special. The slow buildup, the painful message, and the beautiful chord progressions and riffs all come together to make this song hit as hard as it does. It learns more into a rock sound, with electric guitar throughout and Kahan’s vocals growing raspier and more intense as the song goes on. Lyrically, it leans into distance and miscommunication, especially in close relationships, with that underlying sense of regret from not understanding what someone was going through until it was too late. As the first single, it set the tone for the rest of the album, and Kahan definitely didn’t disappoint. 

     9. “Haircut” — 9/10

“But at least I got a soul still, even if I’m in a bad place”

Before there’s even a melody, Kahan abruptly begins singing, and “Haircut” unfolds from there, layering acoustic guitar, drums, and the ostinato of a musical saw. There’s a constant ache in his voice throughout the song that makes the emotion impossible to ignore. The song captures the complicated resentment that comes with leaving home and coming back changed, with lines like “we were fine without you baby” that hit anyone who has ever been afraid of wanting something more. There are points where the saw crescendos upward, as though the music is boiling over from everything being hurled at him, before everything cuts out at once, the silence making the shift into the chorus feel like a moment of reassurance — him reminding himself that at least he still has a soul. It’s a beautiful song, from Kahan’s vocal runs to its deep meaning, and as much as we didn’t want to hand out too many 10s, it came really close; the only thing working against it is how unbelievably strong the 10/10 tracks are. 

     10. “Willing and Able” — 10/10

“Oh, I wish you could know me / And I wish I could know you much more sometimes”

“Willing and Able” is a 10/10 without question. At its core, it’s about wanting to truly know someone and wanting them to know you back; the painful reality is that it’s just not always that simple. And if the TikTok edits to this song haven’t made you sob yet, just wait. Like most songs on the album, it starts softer, Kahan’s voice carrying an almost quiet vulnerability, but you can hear that pain crack and harden as the song progresses, while the guitar and drums grow in intensity. His voice gets raspier and more convicted, with higher notes he holds just long enough to satisfy. The build from “I’d be willing and able” to “if you’re willing, I’m able” is subtle, but we found it devastating — it’s a shift from desperation to something quieter, like stepping back and waiting to see if the other person meets you halfway.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned so far, it’s that rating these songs was a terrible idea. Every time we thought we had our ratings figured out, we’d listen again and start questioning all of our life choices. Still, the second half of the album contains 11 more songs, with some of our favorites still to come, so we’ll be back in Part 2 to continue spiraling.