Songfacts®:

• 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."