Noah Kahan's 'Draw You Out' Is Out, and Sydney Got the First Live Performance
Noah Kahan’s “Draw You Out”, the lead single from The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Album), is out now, and its first live performance happened in Sydney. Kahan opened a four-night run at Afterpay Arena on Friday 2 October, the day the song was released, and played it in the main set.
So the first room anywhere to hear the Sunrise lead single live was an Australian one, and it still has two nights to go.
The official lyric video is up on Kahan’s YouTube channel.
The song
Kahan wrote and produced “Draw You Out” with Aaron Dessner (The National, Taylor Swift’s folklore), recording at Dessner’s Long Pond Studio in New York and at Gold Pacific and East Iris in Nashville. It is his first new music since The Great Divide in April and its deluxe edition, The Last of the Bugs.
It is not a cheerful song, which Kahan put plainly to Billboard: “You’re not really coming to me if you’re looking for heartwarming.”
He told the same interview the song needed real research, and that he wanted to find the overlap between himself and the character rather than write about Haymitch from the outside.
“Music is such a massive part of the Hunger Games in a lot of ways. I just can’t believe that I get to be a part of it.”
Noah Kahan, to Billboard
The research shows. The opening verse has the narrator living behind a face that isn’t his own, waiting for someone to come and take his place. Anyone who remembers how Haymitch actually ends up on the reaping stage in chapter two of the novel will know exactly why that line was written. Kahan also captioned one of his pre-release teasers with “Ladybug, fly away home”, a nursery-rhyme line that turns up in Suzanne Collins’ text.
The Sydney debut
Kahan had been trailing it on this tour. At Rod Laver Arena on 25 September, the first of four Melbourne shows, a phone box in front of the catwalk rang mid-set, Kahan answered it with a greeting to Katniss Everdeen, and then confirmed from the stage that he had written the lead single. Rolling Stone Australia’s review has the moment.
A week later, with the song live on streaming, he played it for the first time at Afterpay Arena. Fan-logged setlists on setlist.fm have it sitting in the main set after “Downfall”, and footage from the floor was circulating within the hour.
The run is sold out. Kahan plays Sydney again on Monday 5 and Tuesday 6 October, then Auckland on 9 and 10 October before the tour moves to the UK and Europe.
The album
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Album) arrives Friday 13 November via MCA, six days before the film opens in Australian cinemas and a week before the US. It is executive produced by Dave Cobb, who produced Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson and now runs creative at MCA. The label says it brings together 29 cross-genre artists, with “additional artist announcements coming soon”. Kahan is the only one named so far.
Confirmed: “Draw You Out” sits at track 27 of 29, directly after “Deep in the Meadow”.
Not confirmed: the other artist names doing the rounds on fan accounts since Friday. None of them has come from MCA or Lionsgate. We will run names when the label does.
What the tracklist tells book readers
The 29 titles were published with the single, and most of them are legible if you have read the novel.
Three tracks are titled “The Raven” (I, II and III). Lenore Dove Baird takes her name from the Poe poem, and the book leans on it hard. “Dove Song” needs no decoding.
“The Goose and the Common” is the old English protest rhyme Lenore Dove sings in the book, the one about the law locking up the person who steals the goose from the common. “The Old Therebefore” is the Covey song from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. “Deep in the Meadow” is the District 12 lullaby Katniss sings to Rue.
Three titles carry an “Arena Mix” tag: “Ruthless”, “Doing the Best That I Can” and “Survive”. Our read is that those are songs performed inside the film rather than written for the credits, which would fit a story where music is how the Covey talk back to the Capitol. That is inference from the titles, not confirmation.
Ladybug, fly away home. Kahan’s next flight is to Auckland.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is directed by Francis Lawrence and stars Joseph Zada, Whitney Peak, Mckenna Grace, Elle Fanning, Jesse Plemons, Maya Hawke, Kieran Culkin, Glenn Close, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Ralph Fiennes. It opens in Australian cinemas 19 November 2026, a day ahead of the US. The soundtrack is out 13 November via MCA.
Sources: Official lyric video, Noah Kahan YouTube · MCA / Universal Music press release, 2 October 2026 · Billboard, Noah Kahan interview · Rolling Stone Australia, Melbourne live review · Consequence · Just Jared · setlist.fm · Live Nation Australia
