Matt Berninger: “Taylor Swift is John Lennon for many people. It is undoubtedly one of today’s best artists” | Icon
Matt Berninger (Ohio, 54 years old) must be understood when he says he explained so many times that confinement led him to severe depression that he no longer wants to take more round to the subject. “I am tired of my story. I have told her on many occasions. I recorded two albums about her and, at first, the songs of this were dealing again with my story or arose from her or foreshadowed her. Frankly, I could not do more with the theme of the creative block. So the intention was that this album was not about depression, or on that period, or about politics, or about the pandemic …”, explains in a hotel in London, vaper of marijuana and scribbling on paper. It is a Sunday of the end of March and has come to Europe for something that is not exactly a tour but it is not entirely promotion of its second album alone, Get Sunk. He is giving a handful of acoustic concerts in European capitals and takes the opportunity to grant interviews.
Matt Berninger is known for being the singer and lyricist of The National, a band that became famous when his five components already had an age. Berninger in particular had 37 years when Barack Obama started using on his rallies Fake Empireone of the songs of The National album and that fired his popularity. They only had been dedicated to the group exclusively for three years. From its foundation, in 1999, until 2005, the moment in which Berninger left his work as a graphic designer, music had been almost a hobby. They were so off the case that although they lived in New York in 2001, when The Strokes caused the world to consider the city again as the world capital of rock, nobody included them in the list of groups to be taken into account.
“We were there, but far behind Strokes or Interpol. They received all our attention while we were still trying to discover how a band. Thank God, because at the beginning we were lousy,” Berninger recalls. They were not so bad. The problem was perhaps that his rock with airs of eighties Gothic and his Tristonas lyrics were too depressing and adult for those festive times. Today, those groups or disappeared or are a shadow of what they were, but The National Fill stadiums and have reached a new generation thanks to a fan: they are the favorite group of Taylor Swift. She said it in 2014 and showed that she did not joke by writing two albums with Aaron Dessner, The National Guitar. The first, folklore, was Grammy for best album in 2021. “It’s amazing, it’s a huge talent,” says Berninger. “Obviously we have won many fans thanks to our proximity to it. It has made a new generation discover my band. Taylor Swift fans understand The National. They catch my lyrics.”
It is curious that in two of the first three songs on the Spotify This is the National List, Taylor Swift appears. It is true, those three songs are more than mine. If you look even the first, I need my girlthat we recorded it before knowing us could perfectly go through one of their themes. Because, thanks to my daughter, Taylor has always sounded in my house and since the beginning I have admired her lyrics and melodies. I have learned a lot from her. Many people have grown up with their music. She is John Lennon for many people, not just for teenagers. Taylor Swift is undoubtedly one of today’s best artists and a lovely person.
The paradox is that while those new fans began to arrive, Berninger was plunging into a depression. He could not write and came to think that he would never go on tour again. The disease exacerbated that chronic scenic fear that surpasses thanks to alcohol. The night before the interview, at the London acoustic concert, a pint of something transparent was pimpled. “It was tequila with soda, to grease the wheels a bit,” he explains. “I have a fairly healthy relationship with alcohol and nicotine. I have stopped smoking. I do not drink coffee or other drugs. I tried the fungi for a while, but they did not give me what I expected. But a drink before the concert, some sips during and a little marijuana help me a lot to connect with the music, with the public, with me sometimes. Fire only with a cocktail is also very healthy.
After two years he began to return to normal, but the recovery was slow and impregnated his work with the band. This Get Sunk It is the first recording in which he feels good, so he decided to ignore those years and also any moderately conflicting matter. What is left with when you strip all these issues? Well, Berninger is basically his childhood. Get Sunk It is an album about who it was before being who it is. “There comes a point where a story of when you were a child becomes the memory of a memory. The past that recalls is unreal. It’s like trying to remember the future. Your idea who you are going to be is a story that you are telling yourself. Your past is also a story that you tell you. It may not be as you think it was. Or you have forgotten important things.”
He puts an example: he recently discovered that he had not told his wife, with which he has been 20 years, who taught him to play pool was Neil Armstrong, the first man who stepped on the moon. “Neil Armstrong had a farm in Lebanon, Ohio, and my uncle Howard was his doctor. They had met in the Korean war. I was seven or eight years old when I saw him. Neil was at my uncle’s pool table. In my memory I was a child and he teaches me to play.” The album is full of almost forgotten loves, weekends on the farm of its uncles in Indiana, Naranjos, Ríos, Lomas and tobacco plantations where I worked in summer. “Yes, it is an album about growing in America in the eighties,” he acknowledges.
Spiritually Get Sunk It is close to Wild God of Nick Cave, so it is to overcome a personal crisis. “Yes, I hope that my album is full of hope. I feel hopeful and I am not afraid. I have a 16 -year -old daughter and I do not want this shit to ruin her happiness or her soul. I just want to be brave. It is my great goal: I have to try to be brave.” There is another less obvious connection: remembers Bryan Ferry from the eighties a bit. As it happened to Ferry with Roxy Music, no matter how much Berninger records without The National, his shadow is there. “I hadn’t occurred to me, but I like the idea. He was always Brian Ferry by Roxy Music. And then, somehow, he became Bryan Ferry. I would like that: instead of being Matt Berninger of The National Being just Matt Berninger. I would love it.”
