The complete collection of The National’s favourite songs
When you listen to any band, you’re hearing the product of their collective tastes. With The Beatles, it’s the sound of their shared love for rhythm and blues, doo-wop, and other popular styles of the time. With The Rolling Stones, it’s the blues…just swapped from the deep south to south London. Those bands have gone on to influence countless others, of course. You can hear The Beatles in some Wilco songs, just as you can hear the Stones in acts like The White Stripes and The Black Keys.
With some groups, it’s harder to draw a clear line from the records their singer or guitarist has loved to the music they make. That’s often because the members pull from a wide range of disparate and diverse influences, creating something new. When you listen to The National’s latest studio album, Laugh Track, you wouldn’t necessarily guess the singer counts Roberta Flack’s ‘Killing Me Softly With His Words’ or Tom Waits’ ‘Ol’ 55’ among his favourites. But you can still hear traces woven into the songs – Adrienne Lenker, Sufjan Stevens, and others, the band has cited as inspirations.
Having formed in Cincinnati in 1999, The National have established themselves as one of the most revered and respected indie and art rock outfits of the last quarter century. Blending serious sounding, earthy and gritty tones with experimental sounds and studio techniques, and all in service of the deep and resonant baritone vocal of frontman Matt Berninger, the band have blended something old and something new together to cultivate a recognisable sound of their own and carve out their niche.
Though his musical taste and his musical output may sound and seem pretty distinct from one another in some cases, Berninger has explained that his favourite songs are the ones that inspired him to create his own works, the ones that “made me want to do it”.
Other songs from his selection make perfect sense when you listen to The National, though. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture a young Berninger playing along with ‘Kiss Off’ by the Violent Femmes, or else The Afghan Whigs’ ‘Miles Iz Ded’. In their case, you really can draw that clear line from influence to output.
Matt Berninger’s nine favourite songs:
- ‘Killing Me Softly with His Song’ – Roberta Flack
- ‘Kiss Off’ – Violent Femmes
- ‘Miles Iz Ded’ – The Afghan Whigs
- ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ – The Smiths
- ‘Ol’ 55’ – Tom Waits
- ‘Sad Love’ – Crooked Fingers
- ‘Nub’ – The Jesus Lizard
- ‘Trains Across the Sea’ – Silver Jews
- ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ – Breeders
The best thing about bands like The National is the blending of interests and influences that come with having multiple members in the group. If you got five people together who loved The Smiths, you’d maybe end up with a group who sounded like a pale imitation, but when you’ve got one guy who loves The Smiths together with someone who loves Patricia Brennan and a couple who name-check Arooj Aftab as a favoured artist, then you’re going to start to get some interesting new ideas starting to form.
And another great thing about a group like The National is that their ears aren’t closed off to only listening to or praising the things that came before them. They champion both their contemporaries and the bands they have themselves inspired. Drummer Bryan Devendorf recently singled out the opening song from Dry Cleaning’s 2021 debut album, New Long Leg, ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’, as a favourite.
Conversely, you wouldn’t be shocked to find something by The National on a future list of favourite songs as chosen by Dry Cleaning themselves.
The National band members’ favourite songs and albums
Scott Devendorf (Bass)
- Vulture Prince – Arooj Aftab
- Maquishti – Patricia Brennan
- Fatigue – L’Rain
- Letting Go – Hayden Petigo
Bryce Dessner (Guitar, Piano, Keyboards)
- Vulture Prince – Arooj Aftab
- songs – Adrianne Lenker
- The Ascension – Sufjan Stevens
Aaron Dessner (Guitar, Piano, Keyboards)
- The Stripped Ink EP – Eve Owen
Bryan Devendorf (Drums)
- New Long Leg – Dry Cleaning
