The National frontman Matt Berninger has released a cover of New Order‘s ‘Blue Monday’. Check it out below.
- READ MORE: Matt Berninger: All that’s left when you’re gone are your ideas
He’d previously covered the 1983 hit while on tour in support of his recent solo album ‘Get Sunk‘.
Now, he’s released an official studio version, which sees him trade the track’s recognisable synths and electronic drum beat for an acoustic kit. It was recorded at Los Angeles’ Knobworld with production from ‘Get Sunk’ producer Sean O’Brien. Check it out below.
It’s not the first time Berninger has paid homage to New Order, with The National previously releasing the track ‘New Order T-Shirt’, which appears on the band’s 2023 album ‘First Two Pages Of Frankenstein’.
During a new interview with NME about ‘Get Sunk’, Berninger explained: “I’ve got Kurt Cobain’s notebooks and he was drawing jets and demons and people barfing and cigarette packets, then these incredible lyrics that are going to the centre of his soul – next to a joke or a dick n’ balls.”
This came as he discussed the vast amount of work that he still needs to process at home: “I have boxes of notebooks and you open every page and they look kinda like the baseballs – these goofy little planets of scribbles, different colours, lyrics all over the place.”
As for the message behind his new solo LP, he told NME: “It’s just saying, ‘Everything’s going to be OK, fuck it all, you’ve only got a short time to live on this little tiny speck of dust in all the emptiness and all that will be left is your ideas. Your face will be gone, your bones will be gone, your Jeep will be gone, your Grammy will be gone, everything will be gone’.”
Berninger continued: “All that will be left are the ideas that you left – and that can be the kindness with which you raised your kids, the kind words you said to a total stranger, that minute you decided not to give someone the finger, that fight you decided not to have. Were you kind? Were you brave? I’m a bad memory for a lot of people, of course I will be. I hope I’m mostly a good memory.”
