Film + TV

The heartbreaking reason The Colbert Report finale ended with a Neutral Milk Hotel song

by Mark Teo

The final episode of the Colbert Report was a fitting goodbye it its host, Stephen Colbert. Featuring countless celebrity cameos—Bryan Cranston? Big Bird?—the show literally ended by sending its host to the moon. Hilarious? Yep. A lovely piece of television? Certainly. But when the end credits played, they began playing a song that contradicted the show’s mood—namely, Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Holland, 1945.”

The choice, it seems, was significant to Colbert. As Gawker notes, it’s actually an allusion to a tragic moment from his childhood—and one that involves his family. From the New York Times:

He had 10 older siblings. But after his father and the two brothers closest to him in age died in a plane crash when he was 10 and the older kids went off to college, he said, he was “pretty much left to himself, with a lot of books.”

He said he loved the “strange, sad poetry” of a song called “Holland 1945” by an indie band from Athens, Ga., called Neutral Milk Hotel and sent me the lyrics, which included this heartbreaking bit:

“But now we must pick up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on. . . .

And here is the room where your brothers were born

Indentions in the sheets

Where their bodies once moved but don’t move anymore.”

As Colbert embarks on the biggest professional moment of his life, it’s heartwarming—and heartbreaking—to see that he paid tribute to those who couldn’t share in his success. You rule, Colbert.