Tegan and Sara, Be My Gay Adoptive Aunts
A Beginner’s Guide
Tegan and Sara are a Canadian indie/pop duo who have been together since 1998 — but also technically since 1980, because the band comprises of identical twin sisters Tegan Quin and Sara Quin. They have released a string of EPs and 8 studio albums, the most recent of which being 2016’s Love You to Death. In 2017 they released a special 10 year anniversary edition of their 2007 album The Con, which includes covers by artists including Sara Bareilles, Hayley Williams, Pvris, and Cyndi Lauper. Their songs have been featured on some excellent US shows, including Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill, and The L Word (the best show ever in my opinion), and they are the voices behind the demonically catchy theme “Everything Is Awesome” from The Lego Movie.
Tegan and Sara are both openly gay, and actively engage with LGBTQ rights issues, and because of this have gained a much larger following within the LGBTQ music scene. They even founded The Tegan and Sara Foundation which fights for “economic justice, health and representation of LGBTQ girls and women”.
“LGBTQ women are experiencing disproportionately high levels of poverty, health issues and inequality. LGBTQ women of color, especially transgender women often experience these issues even more severely due to racism and transphobia. Today, given the state of politics in the United States, we must continue to unite and fight for our rights and against all forms of oppression.”
So, these girls are not just the greatest lesbian-twin-indie-pop-duo alive, but use their fame and platform to engage in political and social activism. And with such a huge range of musical sound and genre throughout their albums, there is literally something for everyone. So whether you just want to dip your toe into the beautiful rainbow river of Tegan and Sara’s music, or dive right in, only coming up for air between bangers, I’ve got you covered.
Beginner: So Jealous (2004) and Heartthrob (2013)
Okay, so you’ve not really heard of these guys before. Maybe you recognise them a bit because of their endless stream of cool hairstyles, fair enough, but you’re not sure if they’re really your thing. Here are two very different albums to ease you in and help you decide whether you want to continue.
One of the reasons I love Tegan and Sara is that their music has changed pretty drastically throughout the years; because of this, some of the earlier albums seem like an in-between sound with them trying out something new. However, So Jealous (2004) is one of the sturdiest Tegan and Sara albums. It’s definitive indie-pop, with catchy riffs and some excellent emo lyrics like “It’s love that leaves and breaks the seal of always thinking you would be real, happy and healthy, strong and calm”
BRUTAL.
The White Stripes also covered one of the songs from this album, “Walking with a Ghost”, which absolutely helped the gals gain some more mainstream recognition.
Fast-forward over 10 years and Tegan and Sara’s sound changes drastically from the angsty indie-pop you’ve just experienced in So Jealous to a triumphant and uplifting pop album with Heartthrob (2013). The opening song, “Closer”, is the text-book definition of a pop anthem — think Robyn or Carly Rae Jepsen — and sets a good tone for the rest of the album. Also, as part of the marketing for this album, Tegan and Sara interviewed a series of people — including Kate Moennig, aka Shane from The L Word *swoon* — who could be considered ‘Heartthrobs’ as a way of flipping the coin and finding out “what it feels like to be on the other side of the infatuation of so many”.
Both of these albums are a good place to start when it comes to Tegan and Sara, and they each offer something pretty different; if you’re more into emo/indie and want to wallow a bit, I would stick to So Jealous, whereas if you want to dance around to some non-stop pop bangers, Heartthrob is your pal. But if you’re like me and you just cannot get enough, you might wanna skip down to Intermediate level.
Intermediate: Love You to Death (2016)
So you’ve had your little introduction to Tegan and Sara now, and maybe you enjoyed a few songs from those albums, but you think you’re ready to take the next step.
If you liked the synth-pop vibe of Heartthrob in the Beginner section, you might also want to check out their most recent album, Love You to Death (2016). The lead single from this album “Boyfriend” is a classic pop song about unrequited love, but this time told from a queer voice. It is something truly wonderful to hear them dismantle the heteronormativity that’s usually found in mainstream pop songs so easily, and shows why so many young queer people have idolised Tegan and Sara throughout the years. Likewise, in “BWU” (which stands for Be With U, aww) the duo dismantle the institution of marriage; in an interview with Rolling Stone, Sara talks about her feelings after having been such a huge advocate of the same-sex marriage movement in the US, despite personally being against marriage. The lyrics for this song include “I love you, I don’t need a ring to prove that you’re worthy” and “Save your first and last dance for me, I don’t need a white wedding”.
The slower piano song “100x” seems on the surface like a ballad about the difficulties of getting out of a troubled relationship. But, plot twist, they’ve revealed it’s actually ABOUT THE TROUBLES IN THEIR SIBLING RELATIONSHIP. Excuse me while I weep.
After their previous album completely changed the duo’s sound into synth-pop bliss, this album continues in the same vein, embracing their newly mainstream status; in an interview after the album’s release, Sara boldly states “guitars are just over for me”: absolute unapologetic honesty when it comes to their departure from their rock roots! Post-Heartthrob Tegan and Sara is up there with the excellent pop music of our times and Love You to Death was included — quite rightly — in The Guardian’s top albums of 2016.
Expert: The Con (2007)
Welcome, friends. Whether you’re a hardcore Tegan and Sara fan and have skipped ahead to this section, or you’ve ascended from Beginner and Intermediate level, you are invited to join us for what is my favourite Tegan and Sara album, as well as their best hairstyle — mullets are cool.
After the success of So Jealous in 2004, Tegan and Sara were at a new point in their music careers, and the following album The Con (2007) became a legacy for them, and for their fans. One of the great things about Tegan and Sara is that they’ve always been fully open and proud of their sexuality, whilst refusing to let it define them. But whilst the music industry these days still has a lot of problems when it comes to diversity and acceptance, the response to The Con by even big press names was undeniably sexist and homophobic. In an Instagram post last year, they reference the 2007 Rolling Stone article that describes them as “lesbians who never reference their oppression or even their sexuality” and another review that opens with the sentence “Tegan and Sara should no longer be mistaken for tampon rock”. Not only are these statements ridiculously insulting, they are simply wrong. This album is full of raw emotion that deals with gay rights, grief, and the breakdown of relationships, and shouldn’t have ever had to contain distinct themes of LGBTQ struggle just because of their sexuality.
The Con isn’t the most cohesive album sound-wise; with newfound musical success after So Jealous, Tegan and Sara expand on some of their earlier sounds, as well as experimenting with some more weird and risky elements. The two singles released from this album — “Back In Your Head” and “The Con” — foreshadow some of the catchiness that will later become the core of their more recent pop albums. However some of the other songs from the album are so different from each other that it sounds even clunky to listen to them next to each other, but they each work in their own way.
The Con is emotionally raw and extremely emo (maybe that’s why it’s my favourite, as I am a self-proclaimed #EmoQueen) and the twins drew directly from experiences in their personal lives that were causing them to write such pessimistic lyrics as “Build a wall of books between us in our bed / Repeat, repeat the words I know we both said”. Their grandmother, who they had both been extremely close with, had just passed away and both Tegan and Sara were going through painful breakups. The evident vulnerability in this album is what made so many people identify with it, but they themselves were not in a good place, and have said in interviews that by being so open and honest about the pain in this record, the subsequent album tour acted as a continuous unearthing of all the trauma and pain involved in its creation. Recently, Sara admitted:
“It was actually a profoundly depressing time. We were going through the first substantial deaths in our lives, I was going through a divorce. Who listens to The Con and thinks that’s a happy group of people? We were f**king miserable. It’s a depressing record. It was horrible.”
Last year, in honour of the 10th anniversary of this album, the Quins released a covers album The Con X which brings together a diverse range of artists who each bring something different to their own version of a song from the album. My particular favourites from the covers album are City and Colour’s version of “Hop a Plane”, Ruth B’s “I Was Married”, and “Dark Come Soon” by Trashique (Grimes and HANA).
So that’s it, you’ve officially finished your crash-course in Tegan and Sara. But of course, there’s so much more to discover. If you want to become a superfan like yours truly, the Quins have always had a huge online presence so there’s plenty to delve into! And definitely check out the peak of their career which was, undoubtedly, this brief cameo on The L Word. Nothing will ever be better than Dana on an LSD trip hallucinating that Tegan and Sara are outing her as a lesbian.
