Songfacts®:

• "Send for Me" is the closing track of The National's ninth album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. It is a slow, sweet moment of affection where Matt Berninger addresses someone he connects with deeply. He offers to be there for them in times of loneliness or uncertainty.
• This is one of the first purely positive love songs that Matt Berninger wrote after a phase of depression and writer's block. "It was so refreshing to write a song that made me feel so happy," he told Uncut magazine. "It was just all these little moments where you find yourself in need of rescue. I was writing about myself, writing about my daughter, writing about a lot of people. It felt like I can still do it, I'm still good at communicating love."
• Berninger credits the love of his family and his bandmates' unwavering support for providing the strength he needed to get through his time of desolation. "'Send For Me,' is maybe the kindest, most tender song I've written," Berninger told The Guardian. "A lot of these songs are pretty tender – I think I was attracted to the music that was the most self-soothing. I wanted to write a song to be there for other people, because I got through a phase of depression where a lot of people were there for me. It's one of those unconditionally kind and loving songs, and I don't write many of those. I'm always picking myself apart."
• Struggling with writer's block, Berninger reached a point where his bandmates worried it might signal the end. "Send For Me" is a song, the National guitarist Bryce Dessner told Uncut, that encapsulates how the band felt about one another through that long, dark period as the distance between them seemed to gather and stretch. If you are in trouble, we will be there.
  
  "In the spiritual vacuum in which we exist, music for some people is something you can believe in," Dessner said. "It's a little bit like a lighthouse, or a beacon. For us, making music together has always been like that. It was just that we needed to come back to it."
• The London Contemporary Orchestra accompanies The National on the track. They recorded sessions for this and other First Two Pages of Frankenstein songs at London's The Empire Studio and RAK Studios.