The start of my twenties were anything but the “coming of age” that I’d been promised. The matriach of my mother’s side of the family passed away New Year’s Eve and I’d been estranged from my mother for many years by that point. There were so many things that started the downfall of my mental health. Childhood homes were gone – owned by new people or stolen out from under my great-grandma when she was too mentally empty to even remember signing away the house – and the skies became bleak.

Now, you might be asking, what does this have to do with a song released by Noah Kahan in 2026? I’ll make it make sense, but I want you to know first the context of the story I’m going to layout for you. The visual frame that the subject of this breakdown still sees me as; this version of myself that, despite growing older, making mistakes that taught be better and a whole Bachelor’s degree between, will always be innate. I want you to remember that as I move into what this song means to me.

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Noah Kahan’s latest album Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs is one of those albums that you must listen to a few times to really understand just what he’s saying. Taking any of the songs at face value only does you a disservice to what he’s managed to capture in just a little over an hour and a half of soulful Americana folk music. No punches are pulled and a sense of gentle acceptance over what life is going to serve you as you grow is what you can expect as you journey through the album.

Downfall was not a stand out to me on my first listen. In fact, I think that track sat on my Spotify ‘Liked’ playlist and faded into obscurity for a bit. It wasn’t until recently that I started to prep for his show coming up in July – one that my friend who is an expert of all things Noah Kahan has waited with bated breath for – and this song happened to catch me in a moment that made me look at it with fresh eyes.

You see, earlier this year the air conditioning system in my car went out. While that’s a story for later, the biggest thing that’s helped me combat the Texas heat has been playing music at the highest volume my concert-bass-stricken ears will allow me to handle. No longer am I someone doomed to sweat through fabric seats and reek of exhaust fumes from other cars. I am someone in control and enjoying the swell of life and sound of my world, soundtracked by whatever the Spotify Gods deem as worthy to be next on my playlist.

It was during one of these moments, driving towards a craft store during a heatwave, that I heard Downfall once more and had it finally click in my head. I’ve always said that listening to new music in your car is the epitome of listening and enjoying, but I think it also gives us that moment away from our attention-draining phones and from having to make conscious noise around you make sense. It gives you the ability to listen and feel the music. That’s the environment that allowed me to fully take in what I thought of this song.

Downfall is the fourth track on the Great Divide album and is a switch from the previous American Cars’ faster tempo and energetic conviction. The song is grounded in this soft guitar that matches so gently with Kahan’s voice and brought together by the pacing of the percussion in the background – firm but understated, like a heartbeat that you can hear in the dead of night. The lyrics are what draw me in. Someone looking in on another’s success and being glad while also praying that one day it’ll all crash down and they’ll come home.

It’s not a cynical song. Not in the slightest. In fact, I think a lot of us have maybe experienced something like this. A friend moves away for college, a child leaves to start their life, a favorite coworker leaves for a better opportunity. You know it’s the end of a chapter and while you are so excited for what they’ve made for themselves, you are in the rearview and you miss that previous season where you were in it together. Selfish, envious, ill-intentioned might be some of the ways this could be viewed but when it comes to learning what its like to miss someone else and to want them back, even if that return means they’re coming back to a stagnant, bottomless hole, you can understand the beauty in those emotions and that hurt.

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This song reminds me of my paternal grandmother. During the semi-permanent decay of my life at that time, she became one of the people that tried to keep me from falling all the way to the bottom. I moved in with her after a series of false starts in new places, toting a car with my belongings and the cat that she did not even want in the house. Her house – always somewhere I had a hard time as seeing as home – became my refuge. When it came between finding my place in her home and sleeping in my car, I would have always taken the route that I did. Maybe I would make the same mistakes too, who knows.

The thing that I do know is that she witnessed what I called my rock bottom. I was freshly twenty, in a stage of my life where I’d felt like I’d lost everything – my boyfriend, my chance at college, all the big hopes and dreams I had. I fell into a state of acceptance that my life was meant to go a certain way and I could do nothing to change it. Then, COVID hit and any sense of freedom I had tanked with it too. My best friend started dating a new guy and we stopped going to do things. My new friends were all online – like many new friends people made during those lockdown days – and I had no calling to do anything but sleep and wake up with thirty minutes to spare before speeding to work. She was there to see the days that I couldn’t get out of bed, the days that I would lay there in my filth and barely get up to go to the bathroom. My shame and my guilt for not being anything like what I was supposed to be.

Don’t think I’m still there in any means. I’ve grown – moved out, gained jobs that taught me how to grow up, made beautiful friends, owned things, and completed that degree I thought would never come. But, when it comes to my grandmother, I am still that twenty year old girl drowning. I am my shame and my guilt from back then and I don’t think I will ever change in her eyes. It’s not a bad thing. It’s that melancholy hurt that I mentioned before. The same one that Kahan sings about in Downfall. She is infinitely proud of the things I’ve accomplished since leaving her house and she’s said those things to me, but there’s still that stagnant edge where I know she’s waiting for the porcelain to crack and the bugs to crawl out of the crevices.

Downfall is her inner monlogue at a default stage. My father’s success brings her joy but everytime he leaves on a Sunday morning after visiting, she stands on the porch and watches the road he drove away on and cries. The day I moved out and shut the door with the final load of fresh furniture I’d bought and stored in the tiny, pink room I’d rotted it previously, she cried. There’s the melancholy of how you’re not needed anymore, you are the past. She had raised her kids and supported her grandkids so they could leave. But, if we ever had the idea that we wanted to give up and come back, she’d have that front door propped open and something cooking on the stove. “I’ll keep the house just the way it was…”

There’s beauty in the surety some of our loved ones, past and present, have in our plunge. They’re prepared for whatever that looks like and to care. Not so much as praying on it, but making sure that there’s someone there at the end of the highlight. I think that’s prettier than anything you can write to congratulate someone on their success. The ‘I knew you had it in you’ followed by a somber ‘But if anything happens, call me.’ Good thing, my grandmother is on speed dial. Just in case.