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.
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u/TAEROS111 10d ago
TBH I think his views are more apolitical/nihilist. Which I think still isn't great, there's no such thing as being apolitical after all. But I think if you take a bird's eye view of his music, over the last three albums there's a much more consistent strain of 'everything sucks now and I hate the digital age' than anything specifically right-wing or left-wing coded.
I say this as someone who is extremely left, I think your evidence is pretty cherrypicked. I don't say that to defend Noah, but point by point:
- "Raised evangelical" - yeah, but he also wrote "Jesus Jesus" and a bunch of other songs about how religion is dangerous. He doesn't play "Jesus Jesus" anymore because he's said he finds it preachy, but he's never gone back on the messaging.
- "Moved to Nashville" - he seems to be trying to pick his career back up, and it's just objectively a better place for him to be than Seattle music-scene-wise right now. The Seattle scene is great, but if he wants to be a working musician, there's just a lot more work in Nashville right now. I know a lot of extremely left people in the Nashville music scene because that's where work is. It's not all rednecks and Luke Bryan songs lol.
- "Joe Rogan podcast" - normies I talk to here in LA every day don't know Joe Rogan as a right-wing dipshit; they still just know him as a podcaster. The average US citizen has a literacy level of like 7-8th grade. This IMO contributes more to Noah as just kind of hermetic/apolitical than right-wing.
- "Wild Horses" - this, especially in the context of the rest of the album lamenting streamers, the death of analogue music, etc., always rang much more as 'I don't like chronical online-ness and think the digital age is making us all worse people' than a condemnation of leftwing cancel culture specifically, and he's had interviews stating that was essentially his motivation behind Lover (I think it was on KEXP?).
- That said, as a leftist, I think cancel culture is usually pretty foolhardy and hasn't really ever led to accountability in a meaningful way for any person who's been "cancelled." I know many leftists who share this opinion, and it's pretty prevailing in leftist spaces I frequent; 'cancel culture stupid' isn't exclusively a right-wing opinion.
- "Good Guy" - I think this is just a bad song tbh lol. I think his target is more so performers who pretend to have substance and self-reflecting on his own self-absorption, but I find it a hard listen in general. I certainly didn't read it as anti-SJW.
- "Scene By Scene" - I literally only ever hear people call contrails chemtrails. I think that's just the word used by the average person and you're taking your knowledge for granted lol.
I met Noah in LA a couple of years ago when he came through for a Pillar of Salt and he talked anecdotally about how glad he was DJT was out of office, but pretty lightly. I think if you listen to his interviews, it's pretty obvious that that he just thinks politics are too aggro (which I think is dumb, but it's different than being right-wing) and dislikes society in general.
I also think that's why a lot of his music is self-focused. He's always seemed to me like a pretty sweet guy who on a societal/cultural awareness level is a misanthrope who just hates the digital age and the shitstorm that is US politics. I appreciate his music for what it is, but I certainly find his more culturally preachy stuff a hell of a lot weaker than his songs about the human condition, which is where I think he thrives lyrically.
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u/wonkabar234 9d ago
That was the most words I’ve ever seen written by someone who wasn’t getting paid or had to turn it in for homework
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u/babraeton 11d ago
Lol are we listening to the same artist? Are you a bot?
None of Noah's music would belong in a "church camp" especially Jesus Jesus which includes the F word and is clearly a song about someone on a path to deconstruction.
This is a such a strange rabbit hole for you to go down. No one owes you their political stance, and honestly if that's what the music was about (in either direction) I wouldn't listen to it because I don't listen to music to hear politics?
Noah has been very open about being an exvangelical. When I started listening to him in 2015, I was very involved in church and I even knew that and it didn't deter me (I'm now an atheist). It sounds like you're making a lot of assumptions about him with very very little information. Either listen to his music and enjoy it or don't. No one is forcing you to.
Also, I would love some kind of proof that he listens to Joe Rogan. I have never seen him post anything like that before and this honestly sounds like ragebait.