‘Fake Empire’: The National song that challenged rock music
It says a lot that the kind of song that breaks a rock ‘n’ roll band into the mainstream these days isn’t a fist-in-the-air anthem or a slick, catchy pop track. Instead, an understated, meditative piano-led piece about feeling disillusioned about your country is the number that caused the rise of one of the most graceful rock bands of their generation, The National. Despite being written about George W Bush’s America, ‘Fake Empire’ is a song that, depressingly, just keeps getting relevant with time.
During an interview with The Quietus, singer Matt Berninger described the song as being about a state of being “where you can’t deal with the reality of what’s really going on, so let’s just pretend that the world’s full of bluebirds and ice skating.” In 2025, the act of creating an illusory world to cope with how catastrophic the one outside your window is now just called “self-care”. So, a whole song about it will never not be relevant.
However, that’s probably not what first catches your ear about the song, as lovely and soothing as Matt Berninger’s baritone always is. Instead, it’s that piano hook that worms its way into your head, and probably not for any reason you can quite put your finger on. After all, it’s so simple on the surface—three bass notes played with the left hand, one chord over the top with the right. Yet, there’s something ever so slightly off about it.
Like the fantasy land you immerse yourself in to ignore the news, there’s something slightly distorted about that piano hook. Something that almost imperceptibly disrupts the bliss you’ve made for yourself. The truth is, that piano hook is a whole lot more complex than it is on the surface, and it is by no means an accident. In fact, it’s the reason that the entire song came together in the first place.
While talking to SFGate, guitarist Bryce Dessner explained the origin of the song came from experimenting with one particular musical concept. He said, “Conceptually, I said I would love to write a song that was based on a certain polyrhythm, the four-over-three pattern, which is what you hear in the piano. It’s something I, personally, have never heard in rock music.”
He went on to say: “What’s interesting is the song sounds like it’s in four, but it’s in three. The harmonies and the way I’m playing the piano music are actually incredibly simple—sort of like ‘Chopsticks’ simple—with this really weird rhythm. At the end we said, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if we had a horn fanfare’, so Padma [Newsome] wrote this very Steve Reichian minimalist horn fanfare.”
Even without Berninger’s voice, the music speaks for itself. In fact, the music was arguably what got the band’s first mainstream exposure when an instrumental version of the track was used in a 2008 presidential campaign video by an up-and-coming politician by the name of Barack Obama. The heart-stopping crescendo triggered by that fanfare matched the fervour the then-Democratic candidate was stirring across the country.
We haven’t done much right since then, but we’ve at least done right by The National. There’s some solace to be taken in that. Maybe that’s just me building my own ‘Fake Empire’, though.
