Carin
Besser
1 Hollywood Music Media Award
Nomination
About Carin Besser
Biography
Carin Besser has been co-writing lyrics for the band The National since their 2007 album Boxer. In 2003, she was working as a fiction editor for the New Yorker and living in New York City, when she met Matt Berninger, the lead singer of the National. Soon after they met, they began writing together, and they have been working together on lyric-writing ever since. In 2013, they collaborated with Matt’s younger brother, Tom Berninger, on the documentary Mistaken for Strangers, a comic look at life on the road with a touring band. The film opened the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. A few years later, Matt began working with the writer and director Erica Schmidt on lyrics for a musical version of Cyrano de Bergerac, with a score composed by Bryce and Aaron Dessner. As the team developed the work, the number of songs blossomed, and Carin was soon contributing lyrics as well. An off-broadway production, called Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage, was performed in 2019. A film version, directed by Joe Wright, followed in 2021, and includes the song “Wherever I Fall,” beautifully performed for the film by Glen Hansard, Sam Amidon and Scott Folan. Carin now lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter.