“I started writing music for myself when I was thirteen, and I feel like those years from when I was thirteen until I was a freshman in college were really formative for my sound and just figuring out what I wanted my music to sound like. I don’t think I ever quite hit it in that time, but it was all just a learning experience.”
What Noah Levine considers a “learning experience” would for many people be one of the coolest parts of their lives. But for Levine, it was just the first in a series of stepping stones. The Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist started writing music at just thirteen years old, and at twenty-two, he’s worked with producer Gabe Simon, co-written and played guitar on multiple tracks of Noah Kahan’s breakout album Stick Season, and toured arenas all over the world with Kahan’s band.
Throughout it all, he’s worked to hone his skills as a songwriter, now he’s back to writing and releasing music of his own, armed with incredible life experience that’s given him a new perspective on songwriting.
While most people know Noah Levine from his work with Kahan on Stick Season, the twenty-two year old wonderkid actually started writing and publishing music years before they met. Levine was still in high school when the songs he now considers a mere learning experience caught the eye of industry professionals who began championing his projects. Among them was agent Jeffery Hasson, who connected Levine with producer Gabe Simon for a weekend of writing in Simon’s Nashville studio. After a few days of working on songs that “will probably never see the light of day” Levine was hooked.
“I loved working with [Simon] and I very persistently pestered him for the next eight months to see if he would let me intern for him, or just… I think – bottom line I just wanted to watch him work. Seeing him write and produce at a professional level like that for the first time, for me was one of the most influential things to be able to witness, as someone who [had] never worked with somebody else before at that time. And so I was obsessed with wanting more, and so I asked him to intern and he eventually said yes, and that’s when I met Noah ‘cause they were finishing the Stick Season record. Noah had me play some guitar and stuff cause they knew I was a guitar player and four weeks after that Noah asked if I would drop out to come tour with him.”
Dropping out of Berklee College of Music to go on a two year world tour ended up being the best education Levine could have asked for, and he credits his time working with Kahan on tour and in the studio as one of the most influential experiences of his life and career, sharing that the experience impacted the way he writes and understands music on the most intimate levels.
“Joining a writer like Noah sort of rocked me to my core. He’s a writer through and through, and there was no sort of emphasis or stress on what chords were going underneath it, it was just a vehicle for him to say what he needed to say. That was really inspirational for me.”
“When I started touring with Noah I sort of put a pause on releasing any music under my name, for like two years. I feel like I really just needed an intake period to figure out how I want to connect to my music and how I want to connect to any potential fans who listen to my music… I started writing on the road, and it was the first time I was writing stuff that felt honest to me. It was the first time I allowed myself to write about things that I had never had an interest in reaching. Those parts of myself, they may have felt too dark or too intense and I never knew how to connect with music that way. So Noah really taught me how to do that, and this music that’s starting to come out this year and throughout the next while is really sort of a reflection of me finally being able to write about the stuff that I never really allowed myself to when I was younger.”
The songs Levine is releasing now are a masterful balance of lyrics and production. They’re also entirely his own, shaped by his unique experiences and steeped in metaphor. “One of the ways I understand emotions is through metaphors – outside of songwriting, every day if I’m feeling something complex, I try to relate it to something simple, that makes it almost tangible.”
His debut single “Don’t Know Why” does this perfectly, turning feelings into tangible moments that read like poetry. Levine’s newest release, “Bacteria”, “is one giant metaphor for how I feel about imposter syndrome and how I sometimes don’t feel deserving of praise or the good things that happen to me. And it’s a scary feeling, but it helps to relate it to something tangible or almost cinematic where I can be like ‘oh, this feels like that, so I’m not alone in how this feels’.”
Levine started writing “Bacteria” around the time that his work with Noah Kahan was first taking off. “All of a sudden eyes that wouldn’t give me the time of day were suddenly looking at me, and it felt strange to be suddenly believed in by people when for a long time I was the only one to believe in myself. When it happens really fast it’s almost like ‘woah, maybe I’m not that good, or maybe I’m not everything people think I am’ and it’s important to recognize that that’s all insecurity and not based in truth, but it’s a real feeling nonetheless and I just wanted to write about that. Bacteria was just a free flowing channel of those thoughts.”
“Don’t Know Why” and “Bacteria” are the first of many releases Levine has planned for the year. His debut EP “Deceiver” is set for release this summer, although he hesitates to go into too much detail about what he’s releasing next.
“I feel like I want to let the music speak for itself,” he says, “you know, if people want to join along for the ride and follow the stuff I’m doing in the future, I’m an open book.”
Although “Don’t Know Why” and “Bacteria” are far from the first he’s written and released, Levine still considers them to be his debut. “My older stuff I wrote and released between the ages of like fourteen years old and, like, seventeen years old. I was really young. It’s kind of like hearing yourself talk or watching a video of yourself when you’re younger… part of it you can’t stand, but also you’re a different person. If I was the same person I was when I was sixteen years old I’d have some other issues to deal with. I feel like this is a fresh start for me to sort of start a new chapter as a new artist, cause it feels new to me. It doesn’t feel like an extension of the stuff I did when I was younger. The stuff I did when I was younger were all stepping stones to get to where I am today, but it doesn’t feel like a continuation of that story.”
Continuation or not, the story that Noah Levine is telling now is one the world should be eager to hear.
You can stream “Don’t Know Why” and “Bacteria’ on Spotify or Apple Music. For more news on upcoming releases, keep up with Noah on Instagram @noahlevine.
