Graceless

Album: Trouble Will Find Me (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • Matt Berniger ruminates on mortality on this drum-heavy song. "God loves everybody, don't remind me," he sings. Berninger's relationship to the afterlife is often fragile. On another Trouble Will Find Me track, "Don't Swallow the Cap" he sings about his fear of leaving his loved ones behind.
  • The National premiered the song during an April 5, 2013 concert at the Michelberger Hotel in Berlin.
  • The song's black and white music video finds The National getting drunk and getting up to all sorts of mischief, which includes riding bikes into a pool and shooting off a potato gun. The clip was shot at frontman Matt Berninger's parent's house in Cincinnati, Ohio and found the band suffering a series of mishaps. Bassist Scott Devendorf ended up with a minor concussion, guitarist Bryce Dessner injured his back, and Berninger suffered a face injury whilst riding his bike into a swimming pool and hitting the water hard with his face all three times. "I had glasses on," he explained to Rolling Stone "I had bruises around my eyes where the glasses hit. It was the most brutal video we've ever done. It was really fun, but it cost us. No one died, though."
  • The National made their Saturday Night Live debut on March 8, 2014 when they performed this song and "I Need My Girl" during the show. They'd previously played "Graceless" on The Colbert Report and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

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