The National almost recorded Taylor Swift number ones ‘Cardigan’ and ‘Willow’
The lead singer of The National, Matt Berninger, has claimed that he had tried to get the band to record a couple of songs from Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore.
Speaking in a new interview with The Guardian, Berninger stated: “I’d taken a swing at [‘Cardigan’] and ‘Willow’ and a couple of others, and I wasn’t having a lot of luck, so Aaron [Dessner] sent them to Taylor”. “I always have a lot of music to work on, and I am looking for something to connect emotionally,” he added, “The reverse has happened too, where Aaron wrote something for Taylor, and I dove right in. It works both ways”.
The backing track for both ‘Cardigan’ and ‘Willow’ was composed by The National guitarist Aaron Dessner, who worked with Swift as a producer on both Folklore and Evermore. Both songs were number one songs for Swift on the Billboard Hot 100.
“There’s a lot of raw material,” Dessner said in the same interview regarding material that goes to either The National or Swift. “I might write 200 ideas, and Matt would focus on 10 or 20. A lot is left over.”
“She is an incredibly gifted writer, with the lyrical prowess of a Joni Mitchell but also an entertainer on this level of, like, Beyonce, and I don’t think we’ve seen that before,” Dessner added. “She made me so much better than I could have ever imagined on my own. It felt like a lightning bolt hit the house. Because I just do what I do. And then she would be like, ‘here’s this elaborately written narrative to your sad piano that you played on ‘Cardigan’.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.