How Taylor Swift turned ‘Sad Dad’ Matt Berninger into a teen icon

The legend on the distant stranger’s jacket read “Sad Dads”. The fine print came into focus up close. “The National”. Ah. My fellow dog-walker wasn’t advertising a community support group, he was wearing band merch: some rock critic’s slur reclaimed as a badge of honour.

Matt Berninger is chuffed to receive this snapshot of solidarity from the far side of the world. The National’s softly dishevelled frontman has just finished a day of rehearsal with his Get Sunk band, named for his new solo album. He weaves through Knobworld Studios in Los Angeles looking for a quiet place to talk.

“It’s so funny, I see teenagers wearing ‘Sad Dads’ stuff and it’s super-cool. I love it,” he says. It was guitarist Aaron Dessner who saw the cheap shot as a merch opportunity, “but I mean, every person in the National, we all have kids – and we all struggle with emotional problems,” he says with a chuckle.

Despite the exquisitely downcast tone of a dozen albums, “I’m usually a really funny, happy dad,” he insists. “My daughter’s 16, and I would say 80 per cent of that time, I’ve been a happy, funny dad. But she’s seen me sad. I’ve been there.”

Berninger on stage with the National.Credit: Redferns

It’s worth unpacking the fact that her friends are just as likely as the next middle-aged bloke to adore her dad’s work. We’ll get to the National’s weird synergy with Taylor Swift later. But talking about his second album outside of the band he’s fronted for 25 years, it’s the sad part that needs addressing first.

With co-writer Sean O’Brien, he “made a batch of songs we were calling Get Sunk five years ago,” Berninger says, “but then I went into a long period of depression and writer’s block. I put down every project, including a lot of National songs I was working on.

“So strangely, I’d already written a song called Get Sunk before a period I can only describe as the most sunk I’ve ever been. So it was a prescient batch of songs, and I avoided listening to them for a long time.”

Berninger told talk-show host David Letterman he was so bereft he “couldn’t even pick up a baseball”. With coloured pens and serpentine lines, he’s composed his funny-sad and always poetic lyrics on those things for as long as he can remember.

“The first thing I knew I was good at was baseball. I played baseball in grade school. Then the next thing was drawing. My parents were teachers and lawyers, but artists at heart. So I was always an artist.”

Berninger graduated from Cincinnati University as a graphic designer in the mid-’90s. He spent a decade as a creative director in New York during the dot-com boom as the National came together.

“I still toss baseballs with my daughter, I still toss baseballs with my dad. There’s something about occupying your mind doing one thing and you end up having the best conversations,” he says. “So walls, shoes, baseballs ... If an idea hits while I’m reading, I’ll write it right there in the book. Then I’ll remember, ‘Oh, there’s a song in that book.’” He laughs. “It’s easier to keep track of where shit is, instead of tracking stuff across a bunch of identical black notebooks.”

In January 2023, the first two pages of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein inexplicably pierced the darkness in Berninger’s head. A spare, vulnerable recalibration, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, became the first of two new National albums that year. The other was Laugh Track.

The Alcott, a brilliantly loaded duet with Taylor Swift, was a watershed moment. As Berninger weathered his bleakest days, she had invited Dessner to co-write and produce her Grammy-winning Folklore album. So it was that musical ideas demoed for the sad-dad-in-chief fell into the hands of the world’s hottest teen idol.

Dessner has since co-created two more of Swift’s albums. On Evermore, the National made an appearance on the melancholic ex-lovers’ duet Coney Island. At every step, the seamlessness of their collaboration has been, for anyone beholden to ideas of genre or demographics, a revelation.

“It’s not like a marketing plug-in,” Berninger says. “It’s super organic. Aaron’s relationship with Taylor is because she was a big fan … But our connection with her has changed the chemistry of the whole fan base. We’ve learned so much and we have more fans, which has been healthy for all of us.”

Creative alliances are crucial for Berninger. “I can’t do anything by myself,” he says. “I can’t play guitar or piano.” When singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens was invited to contribute to Boxer, the band’s breakthrough album of 2017, “that’s the first time I realised how much I could learn from somebody else’s input”.

The National’s “open-door thing” has since drawn a dazzling array of voices into their world, among them Sharon Van Etten, Annie Clark (St Vincent), Lisa Hannigan, Phoebe Bridgers, Rosanne Cash and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon.

“I only want singers on our stuff who are also great lyricists and songwriters,” Berninger says. He lists them off, adding Get Sunk guests Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits) and Ronboy (Julia Laws).

“Those are all artists who write beautiful words. And I know a good writer will be able to see what I’m trying to say, not just mimic my vibe. I’ve described us as vampires. We invite you in and we bleed you for your ideas, your brilliance,” he says with a laugh. “Every time anybody’s collaborated with us, we’ve learned so much.”

Maybe the most significant of the past 15 years has been Berninger’s wife, Carin Besser. A former New Yorker fiction editor and published writer in her own right, she began offering feedback on lyrics, then co-writing them.

Berninger with his wife, Carin Besser: “We joke that Carin is our Yoko.”Credit: The New York Times

“We joke that Carin is our Yoko, but it’s a loving, welcoming thing,” Berninger says. “The more Carin the better, as far as those guys are concerned.”

He’s equally open about more remote sources of inspiration. Nick Cave is another artist who has long leant into the gloomy caricatures of the pop media to mine his darker internal spaces, often to subtly comedic effect.

“Nick is one of my heroes, one of my guiding lights in terms of bravery and brilliance in songwriting,” Berninger says. “Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen – those are my trinity.

“All those men are also dads. And I guess I really try to write honestly about what occupies my mind, and honestly, what occupies my mind more than anything is, how do I protect my daughter from this terrifying world?”

One of countless great lines from the National’s canon springs to mind. In the anxious swirl of I’m Afraid of Everyone, Berninger sings: “With my kid on my shoulders I try / Not to hurt anybody I like”. Something about prioritising what you protect, balancing tenderness and terror in a precarious world, feels like his emotional compass.

“Yeah, it is. I mean, you don’t have to have kids to feel this way, but when you know why you exist, it’s a relief. When it boils down, I could stop everything else and focus on that one purpose: her wellbeing. That’s my kid, you know? It’s good to know why you’re here.”

Berninger is “80 per cent sure” he’ll bring his Get Sunk band to Australia next summer. By that time, the album and its maker will be transformed again. “Healing happens making it. When the record comes out, I’ve already – ” he waves his hand, tossing a baseball.

“I always think that songs on records are snapshots from an early phase. They’re like the high school picture. It’s not until you start playing them live, maybe five or 10 years later, that the song really finds its magic. It goes to college, then out into the world. It has to live on its own.

“That’s why I still love every single National song, because when we do it live, it’s different. It’s fun to get into your brain from 30 years ago. And realise you’ve learned nothing.” It’s a sad thought, but today at least, he’s laughing.

Get Sunk is out on May 30 through Concord.