ACM Awards: For Noah Kahan, collaborating with Kelsea Ballerini was a 'special privilege'

Vermont-born singer-songwriter Noah Kahan's journey to Frisco, Texas' Ford Center at the Star and his collaboration with Kelsea Ballerini at the 59th Academy of Country Music Awards includes a half-decade detour through Nashville, where the multi-platinum-selling vocalist lived and plied his trade as an aspiring star artist.

His particularly poetic yet conversational songwriting is why he, along with performers like Hozier, Gregory Alan Isakov and former Nashville resident Ed Sheeran, have discovered artistic expansion and significant fanbases among their fellow Music City-based artists — Ballerini included — alongside Luke Combs, Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves and Allison Russell, among many.

Ballerini and Kahan's duet on Kahan's recent hit "Stick Season" follows a 2023 appearance by Sheeran, who appeared with Combs to perform the former's "Life Goes On" at the 2023 ACM Awards event.

To The Tennessean, Kahan said it was a "most tremendous honor" to impact young songwriters in Nashville and beyond.

For Ballerini, his unique ability to blend poetry and approachable songwriting highlighted how the "cathartic and therapeutic" properties of the songwriting process were benefitting the "beautiful," "healthy" and "peaceful" aspects of her life-at-present.

Alongside "Stick Season," she counts his guitar-driven ballad "Growing Sideways" as another personal favorite.

Kahan, 27, stated that he was a young songwriter not long ago and that besides fundamental influences like Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver and The Lumineers, he counted contemporaries whose work he valued like "creative gods," whose work he aimed to emulate somehow in his own style.

In a Dec. 2023 Tennessean feature, Kahan describes his earlier Nashville era as a young songwriter as "(falling) in love with writing for myself and... in love with writing for other people."

In a moment linking himself to Ballerini, they shared the sheer joy of discovery they feel when engaging with their fellow artists, regardless of genre. It's a moment that links everyone from Ballerini's favored performers like SZA and someone like Jelly Roll to Kahan's recent pairings with Musgraves, Gracie Abrams, Sam Fender, Post Malone, Lizzie McAlpine and Joy Oladokun, among many.

"We're being spoiled by the biggest artists cutting the most amazing albums and songs right now. (Thankfully), this moment doesn't feel competitive. As artists, we're standing on each other's shoulders to make great music for our fans and ourselves."

Kahan adds that he feels it a "special privilege" to exist in an era where "collaboration and community" reign supreme across genres.

"Songwriting can be a lonely endeavor. Being able to achieve balance in a community makes us all better as (artists and businesspeople)."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: ACM Awards: Noah Kahan says pairing with Kelsea Ballerini a privilege