The National’s frontman Matt Berninger says Taylor Swift’s fans get “bewildered” at their concerts.
The American rock band have seen an influx of younger fans – mainly Swifties – since the group’s guitarist Aaron Dessner started producing the pop superstar’s music.
Speaking to the NME, Matt said: “We get asked that a lot. we see a lot of Taylor Swift fans coming to shows and being bewildered by the first 25 minutes or so. We’ve been blessed with demographics that are across the spectrum. Then 10 or 15 years ago, a lot of younger people started coming [to our shows] – more and more women. The first 10 years was kind of a dude-fest at most of our shows, but that’s changed a lot. At our shows we have all kinds of old friends and they’re always different.”
Aaron started working Taylor on her sister records ‘folklore’ and ‘evermore’, which were released in 2020, and has also contributed to 2022’s ‘Midnights’ and this year’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’.
Elsewhere, The National – who just rocked Glastonbury – revealed they would love to be in a supergroup with Ed Sheeran, IDLES, and Fontaines DC.
Matt said: “We spent a bunch of time with them and IDLES and Ed Sheeran recently, we were all together. It was Ed, IDLES, Fontaines and us all backstage on buses. Ed’s dad was there, sleeping on the buses and it was like a caravan.
“We did two nights in a row in Germany, and we were all watching football and talking about travel and guilt and Jesuit backgrounds and all kinds of stuff. So that was really fun. We all watched each other’s shows. That was like kind of the best two day festival run I’ve ever had. I was so inspired by everybody. That was the first time I’d ever seen Ed Sheeran live. Aaron knows him very well, so I was blown away by Ed Sheeran. It was it was incredible. We’re enjoying watching bands. We’re enjoying being a band. It’s all good.”
Asked if they would like to form a supergroup with them, he replied: “Yes. we’ve started one! It’s the guys with the pink hair from each band. it’s all the strawberry blondes. So it’s Joe [Talbot], Curley [Conor, guitar], Ed [Sheeran] and me. We’re called The Strawberry Blondes.”