Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 137: Joe

Prompt: "A song for which you could easily name 100 reasons why you love the song"

Selected by Joe

"Fake Empire"

The National

Boxer, 2020

100 reasons, some of those reasons implicit, but still included here.

1. Let us, right here at the beginning, pause for a moment and just marvel at the fact that music is amazing, and that it is infinitely deep, and that you can take a song and just write forever about it. I could've chosen a song at random, and still churned out 100 reasons. I picked a real good fucking song because I'm a coward, but the point remains. Music is great. "Fake Empire" is great. Okay, here are some more reasons.
2. The most obvious is the time signature switch, from 4/4 to 3/4, about a minute and a half in.
3. Back when I was a drummer, I tried to learn how to do quarter notes with my left hand and triplets with my right hand. This is the type of thing you do. But the best I could do was half notes with the left. I could never seem to double 'em up. This songs reminds me of that.
4. Reminds me of drumming generally, since Bryan Devendorf is one of the best drummers of our lifetime, and he's the one of leading the charge here, time-signature-switch-wise.
5. But it's not a painful switch. It's natural. The half-note triplets of the bass drum just kind of morph into the downbeats of the new 3/4 time.
6. The instrument you got watch is the piano, which switches from what Bryce Dessner describes as "'Chopsticks' simple" into something similar but different too, I don't know I'm not a pianist but, and it really locks in, that's when you know the switch is complete.
7. Then there's the horn freakout at the end, which apparently was added at the last minute.
8. But it's essential, obviously. The way it signals the full transformation from slow piano-led dirge to anthemic indie rocker.
9. So I guess the overall feeling here is "transformation," which is a rich feeling, in a song like this.
10. And there's irony in that the song sounds like change but is about something static. It's about malaise, lyrically speaking.
11. "We're half awake in a fake empire." It's about how we're just kinda sleepwalking through life, how difficult shit is out there and maybe the sleepwalking and the not caring is part of the self-care or defense mechanism or whatever.
12. And but also that maybe this isn't a good thing, the being only half-awake. How the song's structure shows you that change is possible.
13. I don't know if it counts as irony that the instrumental track for this song was famously used in a 2008 Obama promotional campaign video. Change, hope, all that good stuff, that's not really the message of this song, if you read the lyrics. I guess that's why they took the lyrics out, and left in the transformative music.
    
14. This was the first National song I ever heard, I assume. Boxer was my first album, and this is the first song on that album, hence the assumption.
15. "Stay out super late tonight..." is one of those lyrics that seems simple but can flower under the right heat and light. It met me at a time in my life when I was obviously staying out pretty late pretty often, and there was a sadness in the lines that I hadn't really considered up to that point, how there is sadness at that time of night, and how... I don't know, something ending I guess could be sad.
16. Obviously, the line gets sadder as the endings pile up over a lifetime.
17. As far as Berninger lyrics are concerned, these feel relatively simple and straightforward. The imagery is tight and neat. "Pickin' apples, makin' pies, put a little something in our lemonade, and take it with us..." They are purposefully unexciting, vivid without being complex, so that the point of us being only "half-awake" is make more explicit. These are things you can do when you're not fully there.
18. As far as Berninger vocals are concerned, it's one of his best performances. Nothing showy—none of the screaming that he had practiced over the previous three albums—but still, strong and deep.
19. The rhythm in the 3/4 section is classic B. Devendorf. There's no space in the beat. All sixteenth notes in complex patterns across the hi-hat and snare and toms.
20. One of the earliest times I can remember appreciating an observation made in an album review—as in, appreciating how it was written, as opposed to it being true, even though it was also true—was how the Pitchfork review of Boxer speculated that it was named with that title because Devendorf was like a boxer with his drums, dipping and throwing counterpunches against the vocals. I don't know if that's why it has this title. Probably not. I still thought it was a great line for a review, and I think about it, usually, when I hear this song.
21. I've said this about plenty of other songs but it bears repeating here, for this one: I love songs that follow a linear motion. They start at one place and end up at a completely different place, usually louder and busier, and they never really turn back around. There is a verse and a chorus, but it's not verse/chorus format.
22. "Let's not try to figure out everything at once" is another good lyric. There are National lyrics that seem desperate. This is not one of those. This is the narrator telling himself that he needs to calm down. We see in other National songs that the narrator very often feels like they need to figure out everything at once.
23. "Do our gay ballet on ice"—I don't think this is supposed to be a slur. I choose to read it as "gay" in the traditional manner, the synonym for "happy," but maybe I just don't like the idea of National lyrics aging poorly (I remember Berninger getting asked in an AMA about the meaning behind the lyric "I'm a birthday candle in a circle of Black girls" in "All the Wine," and I remember the question being ignored).
24. "Tiptoe through our shiny city / With our diamond slippers on" feels deep but I have no idea what it means. Just fantastical imagery, maybe. I like that it's here. A lot of these lyrics make me feel like this would be a cool song to sing at a cool people karaoke event.
25. Not a ton of lyrics in total, I'd say. Just looking at the lyric sheet, I'm surprised how small it seems. I guess this is what happens when the song blasts off into a coda of wordless mayhem and catharsis.
26. I think about the title of the song and the titular lyrics a lot too. What is a "fake empire"? Assuming it's the walls we put up to make it seem to others or to ourselves that we are more important than we actually are.
27. I've always been kinda intrigued by the way the lyrics are sung by Berninger, words chopped up right down the middle and rearranged in interesting ways. "We're half awake in a fake empire" almost becomes "We're half away / kin a fay / kempire." I'm telling you, I'd rip this shit at karaoke, given the opportunity!
28. (Okay, fine: the lyric-less outro makes this a bad karaoke song. Doesn't make it a bad song in total, obviously.)
29. The first I ever heard from the National, but the final song (before the encore) at the concert we were at the other night.
30. I'm still working through my feelings about live music in sobriety, in kinda the same way I was working through my feelings about live music as an alcoholic, just in the opposite direction, I guess. Making concentrated efforts to find out what works and what doesn't under the new directives from the higher power of my choosing. This was my first outdoor concert in this condition. It was new experience. 
31. I was stupid to buy lawn seats. I'm tall and have always been uncomfortable sitting on the ground, and I don't know why I thought three hours of War on Drugs + National would be any different. At various points, I told my cohorts (mostly Pam and Sunny) that we should try to move up, but it was tough to imagine moving up during the performance. At one point, I said, alright, fuck it, this is it, we're moving up, and then the band slid into "Fake Empire," and I so said that now I couldn't move because this was the song, their best song, and it would be a travesty to spend the length of this particular song walking down an aisle with a folded blanket trying to find somewhere to sit. We rode it out.
32. I know not every concert is going to be an "intimate affair," but I was kinda taken aback at lacking in intimacy this concert was. We were far away. Berninger was a speck in real life. He was larger than life on the big screen, but then, is that really "live music" if we're just watching a projection of that live music? I don't know.
33. I'm not saying it was bad, it just wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I thought I was going to be watching the band directly. Probably my fault for not buying tickets with a seat up a little closer. I'm still learning how to do the live music thing!
34. Great performance, it probably doesn't need to be said but I'll say it anyway. The National really put it out there. "Fake Empire" kicked ass.
35. Pretty well known at this point but it's worth noting for personal reasons that Matt Berninger appeared to be drunk up there. I approach this with a complete lack of judgment (and if at any point it feels like I am judging, please let me know so I can work on my wording).
36. The first thing he said up there, outside of a song—like stage banter, you know what I mean—was something along the lines of "we wanna thank the War on Drugs and Lucius for being here..." and etc., and man, holy shit, it was like holding up a mirror. The specific way he was slurring his words, I recognized it, I recognized the attempt at sounding sober while drunk, the intense concentration on diction, and it was... I don't want to say uncomfortable, but maybe it was, uncomfortable, for me. Like I recognized myself in it too much. Like I saw myself and I didn't like what I saw. Yikes.
37. Pam said that his drunken dance moves reminded her of me, which is a cuter and more innocent way of putting it, I think.
38. Look, the persona of Matt Berninger is baked into the premise of the National. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. My issues with it are my own, and completely outside of any member of the National and how they choose to spend their time. But I am curious if there is an expiration date on this. It's been over 20 years, so probably not. I hope there isn't.
39. More generally, I can say that it does have a way of making you feel slightly left out, the inability to indulge in substances that truly do have a way of connecting you to the live music in an emotional way. This wasn't an acute emotion I had, just a sort of hazy feeling that drifted through along with the pot smoke and the beer breath. That maybe I would have had a more intimate time with my favorite band if I could have matched Matt Berninger.
40. Over a year and a half in, and it's not hard to take these types of feelings and let them go, release 'em like a bubble into the air and sky. I wonder now if "Fake Empire" has any of these feelings in mind when they talk about being half-awake. Whether the other half, the "half-sleep" I guess, could refer to substance abuse, or abstinence, or some third thing, or whatever, I'm barking up the wrong tree here.
41. Maybe I like "Fake Empire" because it's not as obvious with that kind of stuff. This is not a criticism, but there are lyrics on Sleep Well Beast that are pretty obvious about it. Drinking gin in a stairwell at a party, getting punchy with the vodka like a drunk uncle, having an intense flashback of drinking in a bathtub with girlfriends, that kind of thing. I needed to hear that in 2017. I connected with those songs strongly in part because of the obviousness of it...
42. ...In 2007 and with Boxer, I needed it to be more hypothetical, more open to interpretation, so that I could interpret as I needed in the moment. Seventeen years later and I'm interpreting it a little differently, and I think that's okay.
43. Berninger did the thing where he goes into the crowd a lot. It at times feels indulgent, but you can't really blame the man for doing it. He's a man of the people. He's more than half-awake up there! He's fully awake!
44. As a sort of follow up to my claim about hating the "sad dad" descriptor... I saw multiple people wearing official National shirts that said "SAD DADS" on them, which, man, I mean, I guess good for them for profiting off this shit, but still. Fuck.
45. Bryan Devendorf looked old up there. His beard is grayish-white now. I am always picturing him as the young dude in the sweatband, but that was, again, seventeen years ago. We're all getting old, man. The dude could still rock the drums, though. He was all business up there, fucking locked in during "Fake Empire" and every other song.
46. Honestly, some of the slower songs rocked a little harder live. I'm thinking about "England," maybe, and a few others. Not that a song like "England" doesn't go hard toward the end in the studio version, but the band went fucking nuts for that thing by the end of the live version. "Fake Empire" already goes hard. It was just louder live. Which is fine, because it's already perfect, no need to fuck with a perfect thing.
47. This blog post is obviously taking me a really long time to do, and I've been dreading doing it. Usually, if I'm typing about a song, I'll listen to that song on repeat. But I can't do that here. In fact, I'm typing this sentence in the middle of the night, in silence (except for Pam's snores). I've heard "Fake Empire" so many times that I can hear the entire thing in my head at will.
48. And this shit never gets old!
49. I liked seeing Aaron Dessner up on the stage. He hasn't gotten a shoutout yet in this list. He is, by a few metrics, the most successful dude on that stage at this point. The man has multiple Best Album Grammys from his association with Taylor Swift. There are a million militant Swifties out there who know his name and are willing to lay down their lives for anyone in this chick's circle, including him, so... I dunno, it just seemed nice that he was still just part of the band up there, not really needing any more of the spotlight than he already shares with the rest of the National.
50. He's playing piano on "Fake Empire." I think. It's tough to say, since his twin brother Bryce is also an integral member of the National. I don't know! It was tough to see the stage!
51. So "Fake Empire" was the final song of the main set, before the encore. They played three more songs when they came back on the stage.
52. The final song in toto was "About Today" from their EP Cherry Tree, which was... an interesting choice. Only because it's not that energetic. But maybe that's just what they wanted to do, end it on a slow note, ostensibly a powerful one. I'm not all that familiar with the song (at least not as much as I am of all the songs on all the proper LPs), so it fell a bit flat for me.
53. Would "Fake Empire" have made a good final song? I don't know about that either. It's their best song but it feels like it's building up to something (as I already said, it's linear). I think it's a good final song if you're taking the "leave 'em wanting more" approach. Which obviously the National weren't.
54. "Mr. November" was the first song of the three-song encore, and I mention that in the "Fake Empire" context because it is its politically-minded cousin, "Mr. November" also being used during the Obama campaign. Couldn't use these lyrics officially either—"I won't fuck us over! I'm Mr. November!" maybe making not the best political slogan—but the sentiment is bang-on.
55. Tough to say whether we were in more or less of a "fake empire" at the end of Obama's eight years. Politics still seemed too insignificant in the scope of my life in 2016. Of course, it didn't seem small in my life after that year, but you know that story, because you lived it too.
56. I am glad that there are limits to trump's music tomfoolery and that he hasn't once claimed that he is a the "new Mr. November" or any shit like that. As much as I'd like to see these dudes take this asshole to court, maybe we can just be content with him losing the election, if life is kind enough to see that that happens.
57. I am also glad that the National, though liberal-leaning in ever sense, did not and have not tried to shoehorn the Harris campaign in any of their songs, e.g. "Mrs. November" or any hokey shit like that. Just vote, no need for gimmicks, just vote.
58. A lot more reasons left... what else is there to say about this concert? Oh, yeah, I'll say this. It was fucking weird how many people left during the National's portion of the concert! So many ticketholders missed "Fake Empire"! Why?!
59. I guess there is a chance that, here in Philadelphia, the War on Drugs were the main draw. Berninger said something to that effect, like that they were intimidated or something. He was half joking I'm sure. 
60. Could also be that the concert went late, and the median age of the concert attendees was higher than your average concert. I don't know if I have much to say about the reasoning behind the National being a middle-aged-person's band, your parents' band, maybe a band you can age with yourself, something like that. But I am approaching middle age and I have a bedtime and I stayed the whole time and I was yawning as a purely physical reaction to staying up late.
61. I said "median" in that last point instead of "mean" because the mean would have absolutely been affected by the outlier of a straight-up BABY sitting next to us. A one-year-old, probably. Looks like he couldn't even walk yet. What the hell? This is a thing people do? Bring their goddamn babies to concerts now? I guess it could've been worse (not an enclosed space, far away), but still. C'mon. It was distracting. I don't wanna hear babytalk during the four hours that I'm able to get away from my own baby.
62. The baby was not there for "Fake Empire," which is good for us, and for the baby. But also, fuck everyone who left before "Fake Empire," including the goddamn baby.
63. I guess that the fact that not even annoying parents trying to talk over the concert's music was enough to ruin the National for us means that this is excellent, engaging music.
64. I'll mention War on Drugs, who performed for well over and hour and should not be relegated to a footnote in this list about the National's "Fake Empire," but that's how it goes—WoD were fucking great! I said a few times already how I love the horn section in "Fake Empire." Similar thoughts about War on Drugs. Their baritone saxophonist fucking KILLED it, and made himself so integral to the music as I heard it live that I now have a completely new appreciation for this band and the heaviness of their music.
65. Lucius are fine. Kinda creepy, if I'm being honest here. I didn't see their set, but they featured in a WoD song and a National song, and something about their long flowing robes and matching bob haircuts made me uncomfortable. They sang backup on "Rylan," not "Fake Empire," so this is an aside.
66. One large beer and one bottle of water was $25. Worth paying any price to see "Fake Empire" live. But fuck, Mann!
67. I guess it evens out with the fact that parking is free, which is a nice perk.
68. And it was nice tailgating a bit with Sunny and with Rachel, and catching up. Bummed that I didn't meet Rachel's Dave Matthews Band-obsessed sister.
69. Also bummed that Dwyer bailed on us (and had the gumption to claim that he "didn't know" we were tailgating, even though multiple phone calls and texts were exchanged about the plan). He later said his favorite National album is Boxer, so at least the young man has that going for him.
70. I have a recording of the concert. I don't know how good it turned out, I haven't bothered to check it out yet. It's gotta be less clear than the other concerts I've recorded, and even those weren't that clear to begin with, me working with shitty outdated equipment meant for voice recording only, not concert recording.
71. Still, I'm sure "Fake Empire" sparkles even under those conditions. How could it not?
72. The worst part about the concert was the fact that Matt Berninger became a little obsessed at the end with a service animal dog that was apparently up front, and kept calling it out by name (to the point that Aaron Dessner had to clarify to the rest of the audience that he was talking to a dog). Dogs suck! They are about as welcome at a goddamn concert as the dumb baby!
73. I guess it might seem like I had a lot of bad things to say about this concert, but that's just a symptom of the format of this blog post, that I have to make 100 distinct points. I had a great time. Both bands put on a great show. I'm glad I was there.
74. I think maybe it shows the strength of the catalogue, "Fake Empire" and all the rest, that there were plenty of reasons why I could've had my doubts, and yet still had an amazing song. For some bands, the songs speak for themselves.
75. I wrote last week that it hurt to revisit Boxer sometimes, that somehow the songs have turned painful for me, after all this time. I don't think that that's an exaggeration. They aren't so painful that I'm not listening to the album at all. I listen to this shit all the time. But I only listen when I want to feel. This isn't background music. It can't be, ever again.
76. I don't remember buying the album. It was probably via iTunes, based on the fact that 1) it original had attached to it bonus tracks, which is so goddamn artless of Apple, but so it goes, and 2) it disappeared after my most recent iPod purchase, along with the rest of the album I bought from that shitty iTunes store, due to coding I guess, and Apple's lies about it being a "purchase" when we all know, in this cloud-based economy, everything is for rent only.
77. But I had it for the better part of my freshman year of college. I had my iPod dock in my dorm room with Pat T., and I played this shit constantly. It's not the album that makes me think about college the most, but it's the best album from that crop of albums that I purchased that year.
78. And "Fake Empire," with those opening piano notes, become a portal back to that time. I hear those notes, and, whether I like it or not, the nostalgia pulls me in. I stop what I'm doing when I hear this song.
79. I say that it "makes me sad" but not in the way that you're thinking. It's not "I wish I could go back" or any of that bullshit. Maybe it was at one point. It's not anymore.
    
80. No, I'm sad when I hear "Fake Empire" because I think it's just sad to think about previous times in your life and think about the pain that you were processing at that time without even knowing it.
81. I had so many fucking great times that school year, so many formative experiences, so many wild nights that I'll never forget... but I also had a lot of nights when I was just drinking by myself, listening to the National in my dorm room, drinking Natty Light, playing Bloons while drinking and listening to "Fake Empire" and wondering why I was alone when all my friends lived within walking distance, drinking and thinking and writing sometimes and maybe chatting on AIM or whatever, but still, overall, sad. I think.
82. I'm not sad for that previous self, because he got through it and got through more and different inner turmoil, and all of that led up to here, right now, and we should celebrate that. But I also have a tenderness in my heart when I think about it, that's all.
83. I think about it a lot, because I think about it when I hear "Fake Empire," and I play "Fake Empire" a lot.
84. Seventeen years is a long time to be this much of a fan of a band and manage to avoid seeing them live. I think my reasoning was usually logistics, i.e. they are too popular and so it's too tough to get a ticket at a reasonable price and I am just gonna blackout anyway so what's the point etc. etc.
85. But I wonder now too if the National is just too personal a band, their lyrics to good for listening to by oneself, say, in a dorm room, lonely, getting drunk, etc.
86. I wonder if this is the "fake empire" that they are talking about, how it's too easy to slip into that kind of loneliness and call it "solitude" or "rest" to justify it to yourself and use this music to justify it too, even though that's not what it's supposed to be for.
87. Or is it? I don't know, man. It's supposed to be everything, maybe. It's supposed to be lonely and it's supposed to be communal and it's supposed to be static and it's supposed to be life-altering. "Fake Empire" can be all these things.
88. And it has been. I've heard it so many times now that it does threaten, occasionally, to threaten losing that polished shine of brilliance that it once had, the first times that I heard it, the deep baritone voice over soft piano chords and the chugging drums coming in soon after.
89. I listen now. Right now, as I'm typing this and hitting repeat. Really listen. And I think I can hear it. I really do. That soul-ripping sadness and mystery and catharsis of "Fake Empire." The sound that nothing is ever gonna be the same.
90. But the feeling is fleeting. Of course it is. You can't go back. You can listen to "Fake Empire" a billion more times—and I might—but you can't go back.
91. Which is a shame, in some respects. There might be a day that I cry when I hear "Fake Empire," but that is gonna be more circumstantial than anything else. Like the "Frog on the Floor" thing. My emotions had more to do with the situation around the song than the song itself.
92. XPN played Dave Hause's "The Flinch" the other day, when I was dropping Martha off at school (it was an irregular day, I didn't have my iPod). Which hit me out of the fucking blue, because this song is, as longtime PoYB readers know, Martha's First Song. I tried to explain to her the significance of the song, and she kind of got it but not really, but that didn't stop me from getting all choked up as I sang along and looked at my beautiful middle child in the backseat.
93. I want that for "Fake Empire" one day. I want that for every song, not just the ones whose emotional resonance are manufactured in the newborn baby unit of the hospital.
94. It shouldn't be that hard for "Fake Empire," to be honest. Malaise is a pretty common emotion to experience as you grow older. That's kinda been the National's bread and butter since this song. I only recently caught up to them. Only recently am I feeling like I'm half-awake in a fake empire.
95. It's a good enough song that it feels like a call to action, even though it's not.
96. But if it was, I wonder how it could change me, in more positive directions than "I used to be sad and now I can't help but be sad again when I hear it."
97. I like to think that "Fake Empire" is a warning of some sort, I guess. That it's a call to wake up completely, that we cannot just live our lives sleepwalking through it all.
98. That there has to be more than this. Or that there should be.
99. I love "Fake Empire" because, like all the best songs, it speaks to something inside of me that I already knew and have always known is true.
100. I probably love "Mistaken for Strangers" more, if I'm being honest. It has a better drum beat.

That was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I guess technically that means it doesn't fulfill the prompt, since the prompt called for ease, not difficulty. It took me like three days to fill out. I don't like it. After this, I need to find ways to cut down on the writing of these things. I want to make them more compact, and weirder. This is my pledge for the final 43 days of Yearlong Song Challenge.