Cover art for The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness by The National

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About

Genius Annotation

“The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness” is the first single from The National’s seventh album Sleep Well Beast. According to an interview with Pitchfork, the song is “an abstract portrait of a weird time we’re in.” On the subject of the song’s awkwardly long title:

“It kinda slipped past the editor,” jokes Berninger, a sense of relief audible in his voice.

This song features distinctly political overtones. Quoth Matt responding to Pitchfork’s Sam Sodomsky asking “Would you characterize this as a political album?”:

“Everybody knows we’re big liberals and I was a very outspoken Hillary supporter, and I still am. It’s impossible for us to separate the songs we’re writing from what’s going on in the world. In a sense, it probably is a political album. But it’s not a concept album or anything. There’s political content in almost every song we’ve ever written on some level. It colors everything. There was no intention that this was more political than before.”

The National are notable for their political activism. In November 2016 they performed a Get Out the Vote concert in Cincinnati.

The imagery of darkness and confusion sure seems extremely fitting for a song potentially written in the flood of written artistic expression following the election.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

Translations
Genius Answer
What did The National say about "The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness"?
Genius Answer

That one, for me, is a hibernation—the dark before the dawn sort of thing. That one’s less about relationships than it is more of the strange way our world and our idea of identity mutates—sometimes overnight, as we’ve seen recently. It’s an abstract portrait of a weird time we’re in.

Matt Berninger, Pitchfork

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