“Finding Himself Again: Matt Berninger, the Midwest, and the Baseballs of ‘Get Sunk’”

Matt Berninger, the iconic baritone voice behind The National, is no stranger to emotional excavation. But in his latest solo album Get Sunk, we witness an artist not just unpacking personal turmoil — he’s actively reconstructing himself from the roots up, starting in the fertile ground of his Midwest upbringing and ending somewhere near a pile of baseballs covered in lyrics.

Berninger’s conversation with comedian and interviewer Jordan Klepper reveals an intimate, humorous, and reflective portrait of a man questioning the identity he’s worn for over a decade. “For 10 years, I feel like I, a little bit, have become something,” he says, describing the character he inhabited: the melancholic, intellectual, wine-soaked lead singer of The National — a persona that, while authentic at first, began to feel like a trap. He likens it to being stuck in the role of a “borderline alcoholic college professor,” a label that started out as accurate but hardened into something restrictive and exhausting.

That slow transformation into a persona — and his desire to shed it — became a central theme of Get Sunk. The pandemic, which intensified his depression and creative block, forced Berninger into a place of stillness and introspection. Touring was gone, stages were silent, and he was left to ask himself: If I’m not Matt Berninger, the lead singer, then who am I?

To find the answer, he went home — not just metaphorically, but artistically. He revisited his Midwest roots, specifically his childhood memories on the border of Ohio and Indiana. “I grew up on the West Side of Cincinnati, which is right on the border of Indiana,” he recalls. “My Uncle Jack had a farm… originally a tobacco farm, and then switched it to Christmas trees when he found out tobacco caused cancer.” (Christmas, he jokes, only causes poverty.)

These vivid, specific memories — summers on the farm, tossing baseballs with his dad, the ‘70s era Cincinnati Reds — are woven into the emotional texture of Get Sunk. Berninger was trying, as he put it, to locate “those happy, carefree times” and channel them into an album that felt positive and uplifting — even if that’s easier said than done. “I don’t know if I made a happy record,” he admits. “But revisiting that time and place made me understand a lot about myself.”

That understanding also came from changing his creative process. Once a faithful user of Moleskine notebooks and coffee shop journaling sessions, Berninger abandoned the analog ritual for something more tactile and, frankly, bizarre: baseballs.

“I can lay on the couch, drink wine, smoke weed, and write on the baseball,” he laughs, describing how the physicality of the object helped shake him out of habitual patterns. The weight of the baseball, its curves, its seams — they all forced him to write differently, sparking new lyrical combinations as he rotated the surface for space. It became, in a sense, a form of constraint-based writing — a way of boxing himself in to crack open new directions.

Berninger likens this method to “putting yourself in a corner to find a new crack.” He’s even extending this experimental spirit into literary realms: “I’m using only Fitzgerald’s words in writing a different novel… called The Great Sponge.” Though only three pages deep, it’s emblematic of his broader mindset — restriction as liberation.

It’s not just baseballs and experimental prose, though. Beneath these quirky processes is a deeper philosophical pivot: Berninger is striving to be less precious, less attached to the idea of permanence. “Losing everything is a really healthy thing to do,” he says. “Then you just start putting new seeds in the ground and different stuff grows.” It’s a sentiment that resonates not just with songwriters, but with anyone navigating personal change.

What’s particularly striking about this new phase of Berninger’s evolution is its openness. The vulnerability he’s known for remains, but it now coexists with a sense of curiosity, play, and freedom. Get Sunk doesn’t just dwell in sorrow — it swims in the full emotional spectrum, even dipping into humor and lightness. That shift seems to resonate with a surprisingly diverse audience.

Klepper points out a curious phenomenon: Berninger’s introspective “sad dad” music has found unexpected kinship with younger fans, especially Taylor Swift devotees. Berninger laughs but doesn’t dismiss it — there’s a shared emotionality, a willingness to sit with big feelings, that unites those fanbases. It’s proof that sadness, when treated with honesty and nuance, is not alienating but connective.

So what does the future hold for Matt Berninger — the man, not the persona? That remains to be seen, and maybe that’s the point. He’s no longer interested in defining himself in permanent ink. He’s letting go of the curated character, the expectations of consistency, and instead leaning into messier, more transient forms of truth.

In the end, Get Sunk isn’t about being swallowed by sadness — it’s about surrender. Surrendering to change, to vulnerability, to the strange joys of writing lyrics on baseballs and losing notebooks without panic. “I was kind of stuck not knowing what to do,” he says. “So I had to just burn all that down… and slowly rebuild something, maybe, more authentic.”

It’s rare to hear an artist speak so candidly about dismantling their own mythology. But Berninger seems more alive for having done so. And if Get Sunk is any indication, his best work may come not from knowing exactly who he is — but from asking the question with even more curiosity, and even more courage.