Assembling the Folk Avengers
Artists Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan are great at listening to their fans online. Here's one trend neither have seemed to notice yet:
In my last post, I wrote about how artists Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan have been dropping one collaboration after another, including one with each other. Well, here’s a new term I came across on TikTok: Folk Avengers.
The hashtag “Folk Avengers” only has 33.1K views on the app, but I have yet to find a better way to describe what’s been happening in folk and country music recently. The earliest video I found using this term is from this creator and fellow music curator “iskjonline” posted on September 15.
“At this rate Noah keeps collating I stg this man is trying to assemble the Folk Avengers,” the text in the video says, with Kahan’s “Call Your Mom” featuring Lizzy McAlpine as the sound.
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A little over a week ago, this creator and artist Cowboyd posted a video about how Bryan has collaborated with every major folk artist.
“Has anyone realized that Zach Bryan is basically just the Thanos of folk music at this point?” the creator said. “That man has Kasey Musgraves, Bon Iver, The War and Treaty, and The Lumineers.”
Cowboyd noted that Bryan’s “last Infinity stone” would be Tyler Childers.
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Fellow music curator Matt Firestine dueted this video to say he believes Bryan is not the villain in this Marvel metaphor, rather he is “assembling the Folk Avengers.”
Then, a day ago, creator Amity Grace posted this video declaring that “the Folk Avengers officially got Kasey Musgraves:”
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I promise you, I’m just seeing all of this tonight, well-after I made my own Marvel analogy comparing Noah Kahan’s “Dial Drunk” with Post Malone to Spider-Man: No Way Home.
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The intention behind my Marvel metaphor, however, was to describe how Kahan and Bryan listening to fans online has helped grow their likability and other artists, music or otherwise, should take note.
For example, Kahan didn’t coin himself “Folk Malone,” but acknowledging his Internet-given nickname fueled the excitement surrounding the Post Malone collab, a much similar craze to No Way Home.
The question now, I suppose, is who will be the first to take notice of the Folk Avengers trend and, possibly, capitalize on it?