Noah Kahan wants his fans to know that he’s been there, but he expects better from Busyheads.
“I’ve pooped my pants as much as the next 29 year old,” Kahan wrote on social media on June 27, “but you guys gotta understand there’s a venue worker out there with a 1000 yard stare after dealing with that.”
The incident he referred to happened the day before, during a show at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. Apparently, a fan too enraptured with Kahan’s music to make a mad dash to the shitter went ahead and did a No. 2 right there in the crowd. Maybe Kahan accidentally played the brown note?
Whatever the reason for the fecal flub, Kahan wasn’t going to take it sitting down as he tours in support of his new hit album, The Great Divide. (Don’t make a butt-cheek joke, Chris. Don’t do it, please. You got this…) Onstage at a show in Toronto two days after Poopgate, the Vermonter demanded that fans in attendance take a pledge against problematic poop.
“I solemnly swear,” Kahan instructed his crowd to recite, “I will not shit my pants. And if I do, I won’t take it from my pants and put it on the floor.”
To be fair to Busyheads, there’s a rich history of pop musicians and rogue bowel movements. Joe Jonas and Ed Sheeran have mistakenly trusted farts while onstage and had to deal with the consequences. Kelly Clarkson once rushed offstage to relieve herself in a trash can — which is probably worse than when Patti LaBelle famously had to piss in a bucket backstage as she continued singing. And who could forget one of the most infamous days in American music history: the 2004 Dave Matthews Band Chicago River Incident, in which the band’s tour bus dropped 800 pounds of human waste onto an open-top passenger boat? It’s the millennial version of “Where were you when JFK was shot?”
Like AC/DC said, it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock ’n’ roll, and that also includes a very long bathroom line. Just tossing out ideas here, but maybe Ticketmaster and LiveNation could collab on a Rock Diaper? It could be superabsorbent for all those overpriced beers, have built-in Wi-Fi so you can keep scrolling while doing your business, and even have the artist name and show date printed on the back! It could be a collectors’ item!
Between the doo-doo disaster and overzealous Busyheads stealing road signs from Kahan’s hometown, the Strafford native has had to show his fans a little tough love lately. Can’t a guy sing about therapy and not worry about all that shit?
This article appears in The Cartoon Issue • 2026.
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