No One's Sleeping

Album: Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • "No One's Sleeping" pertains to be about the murder in the UK of Labour MP Jo Cox. The politician was killed by Thomas Mair, a mentally ill man associated with far-right organizations. Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox told Uncut:

    "I think it's important for the English to realize they don't live on a cultural island and that the death of Jo Cox had a profound human impact on me as if it happened in my own country. It's a representative of the ills of our culture. It's representative of that mania, of nationalism. It's madness that this person died so violently, a person with a family, with friendships and scent memories and a whole catalogue of first dates and phone calls and favorite books and songs. I don't have to sit there and politicize how I feel about Brexit - this has nothing to do with Brexit - it's how I feel about the irrational taking over and destroying life."
  • Bradford admits the song's themes are violent and nihilistic. He explained to Consequence of Sound: "We've reached a sort of very dismal nadir. A lot of times that leads to some kind of revolution and renaissance, but I don't know. It's not my job to be pleasant, you know? So I have no problem saying that there's not really a bright side."

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