I Hope We Both Die: How The Mountain Goats Wrote The Ultimate Anthem To Dysfunction

This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. Find more at NPR.org/Anthem.

The first time you hear it, you're stunned: "I hope you die." You wonder if you heard right, and a moment later you get your answer: "I hope we both die." Released in 2002 on the album Tallahassee, "No Children" is perhaps the best-known, most enduring song by The Mountain Goats, the prolific songwriting project of author and musician John Darnielle for over 25 years. But more than that, it has found a place in recent history as an anthem to dysfunction, able to unite listeners in a sentiment that makes you gasp and laugh all at once.

Up to the early 2000s, The Mountain Goats' music was the definition of a cult taste: A nasally voice and bare acoustic guitar, often recorded on a department-store boombox, which wrapped Darnielle's lonely characters in a blanket of tape hiss. Tallahassee was a turning point: Tracked top to bottom in a real studio, with a dedicated backing "band" in multi-instrumentalist Peter Hughes, and released by the storied British indie 4AD. It even had a defined narrative arc, tracing the crumbling marriage of an addict couple, whose story had been hinted at in songs scattered over The Mountain Goats' first decade.

When I reached Darnielle at a studio in Durham, N.C., where lives with his family, he said the plan was to give these damaged characters the broad stage they seemed to be yearning for. "I would really dwell on their desolation," he explained, "and have them celebrating the hard, ugly parts of the time before divorce." With a tinkling piano riff and a bobbing rhythm, "No Children" announces itself as the centerpiece of that story, as one character simultaneously vents frustration, admits defeat and revels in failure, all from the very first lines: "I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us