The title track of Sleep Well Beast, this song started out as a sketch that guitarist and keyboardist Aaron Dessner wrote for the French classical pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque as a collaboration. He recalled to The Line Of Best Fit: "I took one of Bryan's drum loops and set that to it, and I realized, 'actually, this might be a National song.'"
Sleep Well Beast, The National's seventh album, was their first to top the UK album chart. It bettered their previous best of #3 with 2013's Trouble Will Find Me.
Uncut magazine asked vocalist and lyricist Matt Berninger what "sleep well beast" means. He replied: "There was an article in a magazine about how, in cases of trauma, children fall into deep, coma-like sleeps. There are sleep refuges for a lot of refugee kids. I think the sleeping beast is the future. I think our generation has allowed a system to evolve that's led to Donald Trump. I think our children are going to have a lot of difficult questions for us. How did we let the world gets so sick and people so desperate? I think the beast is about to wake up and ask for an explanation."
See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.
Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.