David Letterman has joked about how he wishes he could be The National’s Matt Berninger. But for a spell, Berninger had a hard time being himself: During a sit down with the former late-night host, Berninger opened up about his battle with depression.
As the pair sat down to discuss the band’s latest bodies of work (First Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track), Letterman posed the question, “Which of the albums represents your state of depression?”
“Well, the two records that we put out this year were started as songs around the same time. It was about a year into the pandemic and the shutdown where I went into even more of a depression. I wasn’t writing at all, but [the band] kept sending lots of music [over]. I don’t think they realized quite how debilitated I was. I also didn’t tell them how bad it was,” replied Berninger.
The musician has spoken and written about his mental health at great length. However, in their chat, he revealed that during the COVID-19 lockdown, he had a breakthrough.
“I was hard to be around,” he said. “I didn’t want to do anything. At first everyone was relieved because I kind of been manic for a long time doing a lot of projects. I was burning out. I was spinning out. So when the lockdown happened and everything shut down, when I had to put down a lot of projects, there was a phase in that when it was a huge relief. Everything slowing down was good for a long while. Then, after a little while without getting together with the band, and without getting out to do any touring, without actually getting together in the studio that and putting down all those other projects, I started to feel like, I don’t know if this is ever going to come back and I don’t know if I even want to come back because that state I was in before I wasn’t really that happy.
Watch the conversation between Berninger and Letterman above.