RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Noah Kahan knows his song “Doors” is a bit of a bummer. The chugging acoustic tune about self-sabotage and serious trust issues appears on his latest album, the Billboard 200-topping The Great Divide , as well as former President Barack Obama’s just-released summer 2026 playlist .
The track appears alongside tunes by Glen Hansard — the Frames and Swell Season singer who died tragically this week in a motorcycle crash — as well as Doechii & SZA, Yebba, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Strokes, Kelela, Charley Crockett, Vince Staples and more.
Kahan playfully acknowledged the honor on Thursday night (July 30) during his show at Globe Life Field in the nightly phone call segment. “Obama? You finally put me on your summer playlist after 15 f–king years? ,” Kahan said while pretending to talk to the ex-commander-in-chief; at press time it was unclear if Obama really was on the phone, but his voice could not be heard on the call and Kahan’s smile signaled he was goofing.
The crowd howled at the joke as Kahan doubled-down and did a wellness check on the former first couple, asking Obama, “are you doing OK? It’s not a happy song at all. Is everything all right with Michelle? OK, we f–king miss you so much.”
While other songs on Obama’s list aim for uplift, such as Fred Hammond’s “I Feel Good” and Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody,” the lyrics to “Doors” are decidedly darker. On the chorus, Kahan sings, “You were unsuspectin’, not unwarned/ That I’m the trouble ahead, that I scream in my sleep/ You’re puttin’ money on red, I’m a sure bet at a losin’ streak/ I keep showin’ you doors, but you can’t open them up/ ‘Cause it gеts harder to see me the closеr you try to look.”
A fan compiled a series of tweets from Kahan from over the years in which the singer lamented feeling like the two-term democrat hated his music, including one from December 2021 in which he flat out asked, “ why does Obama hate my music ,” and another from Dec. 2022 that read, “ Why is Obama mad at me? “
And though Kahan was in a joking mood about #45, earlier this week he was not at all amused when the Trump administration used his song “American Cars” in one of its propaganda videos without his consent. “Would never approve of my music being used in support of you or this administration,” Kahan wrote in the comments on Trump’s Instagram post, becoming the latest in a long line of artists to slam Trump for playing their music during rallies and on social media hype videos.
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