NOAHFINNCE has always wanted community. It started as a kid, when Noah Adams found understanding in the music of My Chemical Romance, Green Day and Fall Out Boy before taking his obsession online, and it’s continued right through his own, vibrant musical career.
From creating a safe digital space driven by trans acceptance and normalisation to a string of giddy headline shows on both sides of the Atlantic, Noah’s confidently built a world around NOAHFINNCE.
Now, he’s ready to take it to the next level with the swaggeringly confident, effortlessly cool, day-glo attitude of debut album ‘Growing Up On The Internet’, “ co-written with the likes of Danny Jones and Dougie Poynter from McFly, and produced by ST£FAN, Julia Sykes, LAWRENT (Chain Smokers, Cheat Codes), Thomas Mitchener (Frank Carter & The
Rattlesnakes, The Damned) and Arcades (BTS).”
Still pulling from the worlds of emo and pop-punk that always spoke to Noah (“I was always just drawn to the honesty and the freedom of it. It always felt like people could just sing about whatever they wanted,”) ‘Growing Up On The Internet’ sees him push those boundaries, with
The Prodigy, Nirvana, Kesha, The Misfits and Foo Fighters all influencing the record. “I listen to everything, so it was important the album reflected that,” he explains. Some of the songs go in “strange directions”, but it’s not about wanting to appeal to different audiences, says Noah. “It’s about keeping myself entertained. The aim is just to write a song that sounds as cool as possible.”
Cool songs and community have always been the draw for Noah, who started his career posting covers on YouTube and regularly queueing for hours at local shows to get to the barrier, but also hang out with like-minded fans. At the same time, he used social media to talk about his
alienating experiences with coming out as trans and, after a lot of encouragement from his growing fanbase, started releasing his own music. ‘Asthma Attack’ came first. A scrappy track about self-hatred, Noah wrote it when he was 15 and shared it four years later. “There was a lot going on in my head that I couldn’t speak to anyone about, so I wrote it down to try and process my thoughts,” he explains. Noah was signed
to Hopeless Records shortly afterwards. Debut EP ‘Stuff From My Brain’ came in 2021 with tracks like ‘Life’s A Bit’ and ‘Stupid’ racking up millions of streams as Noah tried to make sense of the world around him while 2022’s follow-up EP ‘My Brain After Therapy’ explored childhood
trauma, anxiety and depression. “I thought they were super niche feelings that I was experiencing,” he explains. “I’ve always just written for myself, but I guess people felt understood by what I was saying.”
Now, Noah has 900,000 subscribers on Youtube while over 700,000 people follow his TikTok account. Hundreds of thousands of fans listen to his music every month on Spotify while several sold-out headline tours of North America and the UK prove that NOAHFINNCE is more than a
viral sensation.
“I had a following online, but it was impossible for me to see it as a community because it was always just numbers on a screen,” he admits. As the shows got bigger and his music took him further from home though, Noah slowly realised the real-world impact he was having. “I grew up going to shows and having these emotional connections with the artists. For the longest time, I wasn’t used to people having that with me,” he continues. “I’ve realised it’s less about putting on this sleek, cool, effortless rock show and more about being in a room with a bunch of people that feel like they belong. I write the songs for myself but live, it’s all about them.” Over the course of 2023, that connection has become undeniable and that newfound sense of belonging can be heard across
NOAHFINNCE’s debut album ‘Growing Up On The Internet’. “I
just feel way more confident,” he adds. “A lot of the music on those EPs was me experimenting with what I liked and what I wanted to sound like.
Now, I get it. I know where I’m going.”
‘Growing Up On The Internet’ was written across 2023 in gaps between tours. “That title encompasses every song in some way,” Noah explains,
with the song ‘Rise & Grind’ pushing back at the expectations and brown-nosing that’s apparently needed to make it nowadays while ‘Growing Up On The Internet’ is about the long-standing and unknown trauma that comes from unfiltered access to the horrors of online. Other songs explore
“being neurodivergent, but not really knowing that yet” and for the first time in Noah’s career, there are plenty of “angry trans songs.” “‘Scumbag’ is about “TERFs and how they hide their hatred for trans people behind the guise of protecting women and children, by shitting on trans women and children,” says Noah while ‘Lovely Ladies’ is written from the perspective of the alt-right and how they see trans people.That “taking-the-piss, punk song” was co-written with Mcfly’s Danny Jones and Dougie Poynter.
“I didn’t want to be known as ‘that trans musician’ but I also haven’t written much about it before because it’s not a thing I’ve really thought about,” says Noah. “Coming out and accepting myself was the hardest thing I ever had to do but over the past few years, the level of dysphoria I’ve felt is insanely low. Being trans isn’t something I’ve sung about, because it’s not the thing that I needed to process.” “However the conversation around trans people has changed an insane amount over the past few years. I just had to write about it because I’m having to think about it every day. It’s just not getting better,” he continues. There’s anger across ‘Growing Up On The Internet’, but there’s also positivity, with Noah fighting fire with humour. “It’s just how I’ve always processed difficult stuff,” he explains. “There’s space for angry, political music but there’s also space for taking these bad situations, and making them funny or entertaining. It makes it way easier for people to absorb the information. It also stops these terrifying situations from feeling quite so scary.”
Noah is the first to admit that he’s never had a normal life. “I had a strange upbringing at home. I went to a Naval boarding school as a closeted, trans kid. I'm a YouTuber, I’m a musician, but everyone has something that makes them feel like an outsider in someway,” he explains. “I hope ‘Growing Up On The Internet’ gives people catharsis or makes them feel seen, because that’s always been so important for me,” Noah continues. “We’re all growing up in this fucked up world together, and I don’t think any of us really know what to make of it because it all feels so new. Hopefully this record will make them feel understood and remind them that they’re not going through it alone, because I really do know how important that sense of community can be.”
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Noahfinnce
Noahfinnce
Stylus, Leeds University Union
Leeds