Noah Kahan has covered Olivia Rodrigo’s subdued ‘Guts’ cut ‘Lacy’ in his appearance on BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge.
Released online on Thursday (November 23), the folk-pop breakout performed a country-inflected cover of Rodrigo’s ballad with his backing band and singers, featuring stacked harmonies, banjo playing, and half-time drums. Watch the performance below:
Kahan’s cover responds to Rodrigo’s own acknowledgement of his music, when she covered his track ‘Stick Season’ on BBC Radio 1 in October, which Kahan also performs in his own Live Lounge appearance. Following the release of her cover, Kahan posted on X: “is this real?”
‘Stick Season’ was originally released in Kahan’s 2022 full-length album of the same name. Since then, he has been re-releasing tracks from the album as duets with various folk and pop heavyweights, including Post Malone, Kacey Musgraves, Lizzy McAlpine, and most recently, Hozier. Kahan and Hozier also performed their collaboration, ‘Northern Attitude’, together during Kahan’s concert at the Ascend Amphitheatre in Nashville, Tennessee, last month.
The 26-year-old singer-songwriter has been scheduled for an upcoming appearance on Saturday Night Live, on the Emma Stone-hosted episode on December 2.
Meanwhile, Olivia Rodrigo has recently been announced as a nominee in six categories for the 2024 Grammy Awards, including Album of The Year for ‘Guts’, Record of The Year and Song of The Year for ‘Vampire’, and Best Rock Song for ‘Ballad Of A Homeschooled Girl’. In an interview with Extra TV, Rodrigo responded to the nominations, stating: “I was sitting next to my mom and my best friend Maddie on the couch and we’re watching the livestream and we just started screaming”.
Rodrigo’s most recent release is her acoustic-guitar led contribution to the soundtrack of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’. In the same interview with Extra TV, she expressed how the film’s character Lucy Gray served as her primary inspiration: “I think she is so strong and resilient, and there are so many characteristics that she embodies that I really resonated with. I wrote this song from her perspective. It was a really fun challenge for me as a songwriter because lots of my songs are very diaristic.”
In September, Rodrigo released her sophomore full-length, ‘Guts’. The album earned a glowing five-star review from NME, with Sophie Williams highlighting how it demonstrates Rodrigo’s maturity and self-awareness. “[‘Guts’] highlight[s] the near-impossibility of maintaining relationships when you’re at battle with the watchful eye of social media”.
“‘Guts’ doesn’t just feel transitional in a musical sense. It marks the end of Rodrigo’s teenage years,” she adds. “Here, she offers blunt self-analysis while reflecting on wider cultural ideas of performance and swallowing anger in order to comply with the wants and needs of others. It works as a display of real power, range and versatility – all of which Rodrigo possesses in abundance.”