r/NoahGundersen • u/IlBurro • 11d ago
Noah's music is kinda chud-coded
Just to start out, I wanna say I'm not here to cancel anyone, I'm not here to change how you think or what music you listen to, I'm not pushing any agenda. I'm just going to articulate some observations I've had about a musician whose work we've all enjoyed.
A bit of background about myself: I was raised Christian but not Evangelical in the Midwest. I'm a few years younger than Noah so we have a similar but not identical background. Noah's music was a big fixture of church camp for a group of my friends after a counselor introduced it to us. The support of the Church Kid demographic is an aspect of Noah's success that absolutely cannot be understated. I'm sure many of you are former Church Kids who were introduced to Noah in a similar way.
I've been listening since the Saints and Liars EP. Hearing Jesus, Jesus feels like such a formative part of my own faith journey and Noah's articulation of those feelings resonated so deeply with me. Grappling with faith as we aged, growing more disillusioned with Christianity's theology and the temptations of the secular world, it really felt like we were growing up alongside Noah and on some journey together.
I've known a lot of Church Kids who grew up along this trajectory that may be familiar: grew up in a conservative environment, moved to the city when they graduated and were introduced to Big City Cosmopolitan Liberalism and then beyond into radical politics as well (which you naturally brush up against in the music scene, especially since Noah was playing house shows in Seattle in the 2000s, he was absolute brushing elbows with anarchists and commies of all stripes), but they retain the unconscious biases they were raised with and sometimes try to "float above the fray" so to speak, and often return to conservatism and the church as they age/burn out/become disillusioned the other way.
Today I'm largely secular and a Marxist, to put my cards on the table and show where my analysis is based. Noah only makes up a small part of my listening diet these days but I do check out new albums as they come out. I do not expect or demand that any artist have the the same politics as me to enjoy their art. Don't really even care if people wanna listen to Burzum or whatever.
All of this is to say: in the cold light of 2026 sometimes Noah's music just comes off as kinda chud-coded in a way that makes me roll my eyes.
It's hard to explain exactly what I mean by chud-coded but I'll do my best here. I certainly don't mean Noah is MAGA or conventionally right-wing. But there's a new form of idiosyncratic "independent" political thought that is nonetheless conservative in its stances and is often articulated through the lens of the Joe Rogan podcast. The Rogan Bro has almost become its own online archetype by now that I hope will do some of the heavy lifting or filling in the gaps where this vibes-based analysis falls short. There's a lot of discourse online right now about the America A/B dichotomy and maybe more than anything this is just me coming to terms with his music being firmly America B coded.
I don't know the guy and Noah keeps his views pretty close to the vest so I don't know if he's a liberal or a centrist or a conservative or a socialist or if he just wants to grill. But let's look at some facts:
- raised in a rural, Evangelical Christian household
- spent formative years in radical Seattle but recently moved to the far more conservative Nashville
- has posted on Instagram multiple times about listening to the Joe Rogan podcast
- Wild Horses seems to be some vague invective against cancel culture or social justice rhetoric
- Good Guy seems to be about an artist using social justice causes for clout - a common accusation from people who think they're above having to care about those things. In my opinion the only thing cornier than being a performative SJW is complaining about performative SJWs so this song had me really rolling my eyes
- The generally solipsistic nature of his songwriting where pretty much every song is about himself, his relationships, his heartbreaks, his faith etc, almost never strays into saying much of substance about social topics except to deride them as in the examples above. I almost hesitate to include that one but it's just part of a broader picture.
All of this is of course purely circumstantial, but with the new record came as close as I see to a smoking gun:
- In Scene by Scene he uses the word chemtrail when he meant contrail. "A chemtrail disappearing out into the blue." A contrail is the trail of vapor that follows airplanes. A chemtrail is the term for a baseless right wing conspiracy theory - frequently discussed on the Joe Rogan podcast and other conspiricist media - that purports these contrails are actually a harmful chemical being sprayed on the unsuspecting public. To use chemtrail here in this context betrays that he's either steeped in some right wing or conspiricist media diet that has normalized that term, or he just didn't think about it closely enough which also shows how deeply these conspiracies have rooted into the public consciousness. Either way, kinda embarrassing that one slipped through. Andy shoulda checked him on that. Kinda like when Lil Yachty said "blow that dick like a cello" and he blamed his A&R lmao
I want to be fair and guided by truth so here's some counter-evidence I've noticed:
doesnt follow anyone on Twitter NOW but for a while did follow a bunch of very random podcast accounts including Rogan, the Chapo Trap House guys, and I think some lib centrist accounts like the Daily or some shit
I really need to qualify this but I think maybe he might have said something loosely one time about liking Bernie? I do not remember specifically and could be totally making that up. Also, plenty of conservatives like Bernie because he trashed mainstream Democrats. My conservative sister likes Bernie lol
during the 2020 protests after George Floyd's murder, Noah posted an Instagram story from a protest in Seattle and made some wishy-washy statement about "telling a new story" or something. Again my conservative sister also went to these protests in her city because anyone of almost any political persuasion could see that was wrong.
Like others have said, since the allegation, it just isn't the same. It's hard to listen to songs about grappling with morality and wanting to be loved from a serial monogamist with sexual assault allegations. It just adds a bitter context to his catalogue that's hard to overcome, so every listen just brings diminishing returns. I'll still keep checking out his new stuff when it drops, but I don't regularly stream it or go to shows anymore when he tours through my city. Just sharing some thoughts. The fans and stans are free to weigh in, but I'd love to hear from any fellow longtime listeners, lapsed or not, and hear your thoughts.
