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OMFGGG

 

omg yeah I actually saw their tweet about Zagreb's show so that reminded me that you were probably at that show cry0

 

omg I swear I would pay for a ticket just to hear them talk for a couple of hours instead of play music dead6 they're so phucking phunny

 

how was How Come You Don't Want Me. did you cry cry6 cry6 cry6

 

thanks for those flawless pics. DEAD at Tegan's face. Are they as tiny irl as people say they are? dead6

nah I didnt cry moo1 they almost had me at the gay rights speech tho, but it was amazing, the funnest song was Closer probably tho cuz everyone got really crazy and were so into it and I loooved Call It Off it was acoustic and beautiful.

And omg do you know how much the fucking tickets were!!!! they were like $20 cry6 cry6 cry6 i almost had a heart attack when I first saw they were coming to Vienna then my friend texts me and almost kills me saying they are coming to Zagreb and then another fucking heart attack almost when I saw the tickets were only $20 fall1

 

And yeah they are so funny and cute and adorable. People were fucking SMOKING cigarettes at the concert, I mean what the actual fuck and they said they are kinda breathing hard how people are smoking and then I think Sara said how I guess here people smoke cigarettes but last night in Vienna people were also smoking only marijuana and that she swears she wasn't high since she as 22 and had the biggest munchies and ate so much junk food she will need to go on a cleanse when she goes back home :lmfao:

She also told how her mom didn't like how U2 got political at their concerts and said a bunch of stuff and then Tegan goes "after this im calling mom and telling" :lmfao: fucking hilarious cry7

And yeah they really are tiny little perfections on two feet, flawless tbh but so tiny and thin and cute cry6

 

@Nino

 

Great that you had such a good time.  Canadian Gurls making me proud cry0

 

If they are going back to Zagreb next year...did they mention if a new album is coming out? 

I been trying to remember since last night if they said next year or next tour but I really think they said next year. But no they didnt mention any new music or album in the making or anything.

I think they just wanted to let us know that when they do go on tour again they will come back since they never were really anywhere near here before so no nothing about a new album oprah6.gif' alt='oprah4'>

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nah I didnt cry moo1 they almost had me at the gay rights speech tho, but it was amazing, the funnest song was Closer probably tho cuz everyone got really crazy and were so into it and I loooved Call It Off it was acoustic and beautiful.

And omg do you know how much the fucking tickets were!!!! they were like $20 cry6 cry6 cry6 i almost had a heart attack when I first saw they were coming to Vienna then my friend texts me and almost kills me saying they are coming to Zagreb and then another fucking heart attack almost when I saw the tickets were only $20 fall1

 

And yeah they are so funny and cute and adorable. People were fucking SMOKING cigarettes at the concert, I mean what the actual fuck and they said they are kinda breathing hard how people are smoking and then I think Sara said how I guess here people smoke cigarettes but last night in Vienna people were also smoking only marijuana and that she swears she wasn't high since she as 22 and had the biggest munchies and ate so much junk food she will need to go on a cleanse when she goes back home :lmfao:

She also told how her mom didn't like how U2 got political at their concerts and said a bunch of stuff and then Tegan goes "after this im calling mom and telling" :lmfao: fucking hilarious cry7

And yeah they really are tiny little perfections on two feet, flawless tbh but so tiny and thin and cute cry6

 

I been trying to remember since last night if they said next year or next tour but I really think they said next year. But no they didnt mention any new music or album in the making or anything.

I think they just wanted to let us know that when they do go on tour again they will come back since they never were really anywhere near here before so no nothing about a new album oprah6.gif' alt='oprah4'>

 

omg not Call It Off cry0 cry0 i would probably ruin the mood for everyjuan being emotional and all cry6 

 

DAMN at only $20 shock1 

 

lady%20gaga%20falling.gif

 

at the U2 thing. Tegan is such a tattle tale :giveup: I feel like she's closer to her mommy than Sara is.

 

Am so glad you had a great time! Like am such a nerd I have a blast just watching them on Youtube cry6 would scream in person. I need to drive to Texas next time they go there cry6

 

I would fucking DIE if they were already working on new music. I'm not expecting a new album until 2016/2017 tbh. Why do all my faves take a 3-year minimum to put out albums (i.e. Avril, Xtina, Tegan and Sara, t.A.T.u, etc)

 

lady%20gaga%20falling.gif

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omg not Call It Off cry0 cry0 i would probably ruin the mood for everyjuan being emotional and all cry6

 

DAMN at only $20 shock1

 

lady%20gaga%20falling.gif

 

at the U2 thing. Tegan is such a tattle tale :giveup: I feel like she's closer to her mommy than Sara is.

 

Am so glad you had a great time! Like am such a nerd I have a blast just watching them on Youtube cry6 would scream in person. I need to drive to Texas next time they go there cry6

 

I would fucking DIE if they were already working on new music. I'm not expecting a new album until 2016/2017 tbh. Why do all my faves take a 3-year minimum to put out albums (i.e. Avril, Xtina, Tegan and Sara, t.A.T.u, etc)

 

lady%20gaga%20falling.gif

yas it was very emotional oprah6.gif' alt='oprah4'>

 

thanks, cant wait for next time cry0 and you totally should tbh, they just seem so approachable and real but so prefect and celeb-like if you know what I mean and they sound amazing live and the lights are fucking beautiful cry7

 

i know right, fucking hiatus bitches oprah6.gif' alt='oprah4'>

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Just won a Juno Award last night during the first night gala.

POP ALBUM OF THE YEAR (SPONSORED BY TD BANK)

Wild Life Hedley Universal

To Be Loved Michael Bublé Reprise*Warner

Blurred Lines Robin Thicke Interscope*Universal

*Heartthrob Tegan and Sara Warner Bros.*Warner (WINNER) antm1

R.E.V.O. Walk Off the Earth Columbia*Sony

The major awards are tonight.

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is pop album of the year not a major award tbh cry4.gif' alt='cry3'>

 

and omg I didn't know that fuck Robin was Canadian um1

They hold back 8 major awards until tonight. T&S are up for 3 of those.

Robin Thicke has dual citizenship. Born in USA but his father is a famous Canadian Actor. Robin lives in Canada, too.

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They hold back 8 major awards until tonight. T&S are up for 3 of those.

Robin Thicke has dual citizenship. Born in USA but his father is a famous Canadian Actor. Robin lives in Canada, too.

 

Omg, I'll be rooting for them. They deserve it cry0

 

I need to move to Canada, sis. Just realized not too long ago that prince Jason Priestley from 90210 is also Canadian photo-33689.gif?_r=1395266875

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Solo Tour Dates (so far)

 

May 24, 2014 / Montreal, QC / Metropolis
May 25, 2014 / Boston, MA / Boston Calling Music Festival
May 26, 2014 / Toronto, ON / TD Music Cafe
Jun 14, 2014 / Vancouver, BC / CBC Music Festival
Jun 16, 2014 / Minneapolis, MN / First Avenue
Jun 17, 2014 / Chicago, IL / The Vic Theatre
Jun 18, 2014 / Chicago, IL / The Vic Theatre
Jun 19, 2014 / Pittsburgh, PA / Stage AE
Jun 21, 2014 / Dover, DE / Firefly Music Festival
Jun 22, 2014 / New Haven, CT / Toad’s Place
Jun 23, 2014 / Bethlehem, PA / Steel Stacks Pavilion
Jun 24, 2014 / New York, NY / Hammerstein Ballroom
Jun 26, 2014 / Saskatoon, SK / Saskatchewan Jazz Festival
Jun 27, 2014 / Milwaukee, WI / Summerfest
Jun 28, 2014 / Grand Rapids, MI / Meijer Gardens Amphitheater
Jun 29, 2014 / Toronto, ON / World Pride Toronto
Jun 30, 2014 / St. John’s, NL / Canada’s Big Birthday Bash
Jul 01, 2014 / Charlottetown, PEI / PEI 2014 Canada Day
Jul 03, 2014 / Ottawa, ON / Ottawa Bluesfest
Jul 04, 2014 / Quebec City, QC / Festival d’été de Québec
Jul 12, 2014 / Yokohama Shi, Japan / Nano-Mugen Fes
Jul 13, 2014 / Yokohama Shi, Japan / Nano-Mugen Fes
Jul 23, 2014 / Peterborough, ON / Peterborough Music Fest
Jul 24, 2014 / London, ON / Rock The Park
Jul 25, 2014 / Guelph, ON / Hillside Music Festival
Jul 27, 2014 / Kelowna, BC / Centre Of Gravity
Aug 8, 2014 / San Francisco, CA / Outside Lands Music Festival

 

Additional dates opening for Katy Perry tour in September will be listed when available.

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Needing some new music really bad.

 

And realize this every time I see that Oreo cookie commercial.

 

If it's only 1/10 as good as Heartthrob, it will be brilliant.

Oreo Cookie Commercial? um2

Post it.

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Really long SPIN interview - pace yourselves moo1

Tegan & Sara’s Pop Life

The former indie-folk duo discuss their long history with pop music, and finding the acceptance in the mainstream they never found in the underground 

Written By Andrew Unterberger May 31 2016, 

 

“I’m wearing fabulous shoes, and nobody can see it,” laments Sara Quin from onstage at Le Poisson Rouge in downtown Manhattan. She and twin sister Tegan are in the midst of their first New York gig to promote their upcoming album, Love You to Death, and tomorrow night they’ll make their debut appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The ladies are dressed for the occasion, Tegan in a too-cool leather jacket and Sara in a razor-sharp blazer, but the venue’s set-up is too intimate: The crowd is encroaching on the stage, so no one in the back can see the lower halves of the duo’s (presumably) stunning ensembles.

There are benefits to the gig’s spacing, though: Tegan and Sara are close enough to have a conversation with some superfans they’d noticed earlier on Instagram, who found a couch to sleep on overnight while waiting on line for the show. After some good-natured ribbing with the couch-inhabiting fans (Sara: “I have a bit of a hygiene thing…”), Tegan turns sentimental for a second. “There are so many good things about being in a band,” she raves. “The moment we’re having right now is probably at the top of the list.”

“Unless we get bedbugs,” interrupts Sara, with innate comedic timing.

Tegan and Sara have been doing this for a long time. Over two decades and eight albums’ worth of recording and touring, the 35-year-old Canadian sister act has built up one of North America’s most devout cult followings. But in another sense, they haven’t been doing this for very long at all. After a gradual unveiling of their pop chops over ten years of increasingly accessible releases, the once-indie-folk duo officially crossed into the mainstream world in 2013 with Heartthrob, the top-five-charting album whose dazzling synth-pop confessionals endeared them to such megastars as Taylor Swift (who performed their hit “Closer” with them on stage in 2013) and Katy Perry (who invited them to open on her 2014 Prismatic tour).

 

It’s why the duo make comments like, “This is our eighth record, I mean, our second record,” when introducing songs from Love You to Death, whose emotive new-wave glitterbombs double down on the Top 40-courting gambit of Heartthrob. It’s also why they’ve reinvented their live show (hiring a musical director and auditioning professional musicians to support them), even inverting old favorites like breakthrough 2004 hit “Walking With a Ghost” to fit their current turbo-pop mold. “We had always been told that our 30s would be super-fun and that your 20s are kind of awkward,” Tegan explains to me two days after the LPR show, at a bar near their midtown hotel. “You’re so much better and confident and you know who you are. So when we turned 30 [in 2010] it was like, ‘Alright, this is a new chapter for Tegan and Sara.’”

And it’s a book more fans are reading than ever — the duo have managed to add on scores of new admirers by embracing the pop world, without loosening the hold they had on fans who date back to when they sounded more like Ani DiFranco than Ariana Grande. Walking through Central Park, we even run into one of the couch-girls from the downtown gig, who raves about the performance and insists on getting a picture. (Whether or not it’s a coincidence that she had a chance encounter with the sisters blocks away from their hotel remains unclear.)

“What are the odds?” I quip to the Quins’ manager. “Better than they were a couple years ago,” he responds.

What follows is the discussion I had with Tegan and Sara at the bar near their hotel, about their relationship with pop music over the years: their memories of growing up with it, their approach to writing and playing it, and their feelings on now formally being a part of it. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You mentioned at the Monday show that New Kids on the Block was your first-ever concert. What was that like?

Sara: We we were in the fourth grade the year that the New Kids came. And it was a short period in between when we discovered them and the show, but an intense period, and we kind of went crazy learning every song on every cassette. And we had both already picked our favorite, like Tegan loved Jordan and I loved Joey McIntyre.

Tegan: And I felt very overwhelmed, because we hadn’t been to a lot of concerts or experienced pop culture in a way that maybe some young kids had. I felt very scared to go to a concert. I remember feeling fear.

Sara: And then complete astonishment when they came onstage. When the New Kids on the Block came out, just the volume of that sound, I had never heard. I had never been at a hockey game or anything like that. It was the first time I heard that many people cheering for something. And I remember the sensation of wanting to cry. Not because I was scared but because I was just overwhelmed. I’ll never forget my first thought was just, “They’re real.” It was the first time that I had experienced probably what a lot of people experience, which is you look at something and you listen to something and you know that they’re real, but then you see them physically and think, “Holy s**t, this is a real person.”

How long did that phase last, and what was the next musical infatuation after that?

Tegan: Well, Sara and I were weird teens. We listened to Supertramp and Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin. We listened to what my parents listened to. My stepdad had a huge vinyl collection, but he was also like the most avid collector of all things. So as soon as CDs became popular he also collected compact discs right away. We were allowed to use the CDs, and we became obsessed with all that music. I mean Phil Collins, Michael Jackson, that was probably the first pop we ever listened to. While my friends were listening to Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul, we were really into rock. Like Chris de Burgh. It was weird.

And at the same time that that was happening, it wasn’t so much that we wanted to be in a band, but I think we both would spend a lot of time listening to music and imagining ourselves singing the music as men. Not wishing we were men, but imagine singing it like them. I think we related to male music very much. And our stepdad was such a big influence at that point, and joined our family and moved in with us. And he loved Bruce Springsteen and U2, and idolized Bruce Springsteen and had photos up of him up in the house. So I think we learned fan culture from him. It was then I realized how important the relationship between fan and musician was.

Do you remember the first pop songs that you sensed queerness from? Where it was like, “This seems like it’s coming from a queer perspective?”

Sara: No. It’s so weird, I don’t. There weren’t really any queer influencers that were in the music we were listening to, like, in a traditional sense. Obviously Kurt Cobain talked a lot about it.

Tegan: Grade seven, grade eight, and grade nine was where [our listening] went from Erasure and Ace of Base into grunge music. And we were a little young to be listening to it, but my mom embraced it. Kurt Cobain was the gateway drug to Courtney Love, which was the gateway drug to the Pacific Northwest Riot Grrrl movement, which was probably our gateway drug to starting to lean towards queer music like L7, Babes in Toyland. But that was late for us. It was 14, 15. It was old.

Did you guys go through the “f**k pop music” phase of teenagerdom?

Tegan: Yeah, I mean later, though — 16,17. That’s when we discovered Ani DiFranco.

Sara: I think we stopped listening to the mainstream radio probably in middle school and high school. We listened to the alternative stations and stuff.

Tegan: There was a time where we took over — it was like a takeover in our household — and it was like, “Now we want our music,” and our parents had to get on board with music we were listening to.

“That [1999] version of me who would’ve maybe been stressed out by pop music,” Sara says, “that person now would be like, ‘Oh good, things got way better.'”

So did you have a new relationship with Top 40 music at this time? 

Sara: I think it was a strange time because there was a lot in the Top 40 that we listened to. Like, I would’ve considered Smashing Pumpkins or Nirvana to be Top 40 at the time. They were probably the most mainstream of what we were listening to at the time.

But when I think of pop music, I don’t really think of what was popular then. I think probably what became pop music for me was right when we were getting out of high school, and in our first few years out of school. Pop music to me was like Backstreet Boys and ‘NSYNC and Britney Spears…

The megapop years. 

Sara: MEGA-pop. Where things were just going crazy. There was lot of stuff on the radio that wasn’t necessarily interesting to us, but it was really when we got out of high school and that late-‘90s, early-2000s megapop happened and I remembered thinking like, “Not for me. I’m gonna go turn my ears off and listen to the super-alternative, left-of-center kind of world.”

In 2007, I started listening to [mainstream] pop music again. There were a few records that really snuck through for me. It was “Umbrella,” Rihanna. FutureSex/LoveSounds, that record for Justin Timberlake. Really loved that first Dream record, Love/Hate. Those were the things that started to pull my ear again, where I was like, “I really like what’s happening,” and I started listening to a lot of electronic music and hip-hop and Robyn and all these things. It was like my ears stopped wanting to hear guitars, and I was starting to really feel quite bored of what was happening musically in the world that we were in and in the music we were making.

Looking back now, since you’re playing more Top 40-geared music, are you like, “Now I understand it better?” 

Sara: Yeah. And if I look back at some of my “pop blackout” period, a lot of what was really powerful in that period was female. It’s not that different from this period, it’s just the agency of those stars was different, and the sexuality of those stars was very different. We were still in a response to, I think, the freedom and sexuality of the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

When you really think about it — Prince, Madonna, and Bowie — they seem goddamn futuristic compared to what was going on in that prudish, square late-’90s, early-’2000s. We were in the most heteronormative, “Women are like this, men are like that” period of music. And I think I was also turned off by that, whereas I think a lot of what was happening in the mainstream when we were growing up was really gay. I didn’t know it. Like when you asked, “Do you remember thinking something was queer?” I didn’t, but a lot of that s**t was queer. When you compare that to the angry rap-rock stage, no wonder we turned the radio off.

Tegan: Now that we’re eight records in we can comfortably say this, but it’s not just that our pop influences are coming through, it’s that popular music is pop music right now. And I feel like the way music evolves and what’s popular, I hope we’re always hitting the pulse, but sometimes we’re probably not going to. If we hit a male, white, rap-rock time again we’ll probably become unpopular again.

 

You just alluded to this, but your timing really couldn’t have been better in terms of evolving in the pop direction, because the national interest is moving away from rock, even in the underground. Were you conscious of that as it was happening?

Tegan: I don’t want to say that we knew this, but when Sara chose John Collins and Dave Carswell of the New Pornographers to produce our next record, we started to think about keyboards and pop music and synth-pop in 2003. I don’t think we thought, “Oh, the end of guitar is coming.” What we thought was, “We’re bringing back ‘80s synths.” So it was basically that we saw people were moving towards adding keyboards. We didn’t think of it in terms of “no guitars.” I love the guitar. I learned all our new songs on guitar. I wrote a couple on guitar.

Sara: I think when you’re worried that the thing you do or the thing that you like is dying you make a big fuss about it. You put a big glass case around it, you put a rope around it, and then you give it a bunch of awards and you do whatever. You fossilize it. And to me what’s so beautiful about music is that it’s a living organism and it should always change. And to me the guitar is just one instrument that makes notes. It’s just one instrument among many.

Tegan: This is a weird side-note, but someone brought this up to me. On The Con is a song called “Are You Ten Years Ago.” Beloved fan record. And “Are You Ten Years Ago” is a GarageBand beat that we constructed using real drums, but basically a GarageBand beat, synth, bass, and a bunch of keyboards. And it’s interesting to me that people overlook that part when they’re like, “We don’t know where this no-guitar thing came from.” I just go through our catalog… there was a movement happening. It’s not about “no guitars,” but variety. We played 14 songs the other night, four of them had guitar.

I saw that on Monday with “Walking With A Ghost.” You guys completely reinvented that song. Is that a way to escape being Bon Jovi, always having to play “You Give Love A Bad Name” the same way?

Tegan: It’s a way to excite our brains and making them feel like we’re doing something new. I’m thinking about “Walking With A Ghost” for the first time in probably eight years. Because I have to think about what I’m doing with my new instrument. Our musical director has me singing double on the entire song, so now I know the lyrics.

Sara: Uh, if you didn’t know the lyrics to “Walking With A Ghost,” you need to very seriously check yourself. There’s about seven words in that whole song. That’s not a hard one.

I’m sure your fans would be happy to get up there and sing it for you.

Tegan: It’s so complicated. They wouldn’t be able to do it. There’s so many sections repeating in different ways. To quote my manager — this is not something I would ever say — “Our songs are deceptively simple.” They’re not actually simple. Halfway through “Walking With A Ghost,” Sara shifts it. So halfway through the song she starts to sing the verse over the chorus and then when she goes back to the chorus, she sings over the verse. I’m not trying to say like, “Woahhhhh,” but really when I’m playing these songs, I feel like I have to use my whole brain.

A lot of your signature songs are sort of tricky like that. Like with “Boyfriend,” the chorus jumps halfway through, and in “The Con” the measure lasts a couple of beats longer than you’d expect it to.

Tegan: But only twice! These things come naturally to us. They’re instinctive choices that we make. I think that’s why we got along with [Heartthrob and Love You to Deathproducer] Greg Kurstin so well. He made me feel like it was a triumph that we had done that. He was like, “You guys are strange. How you do things is strange. You make choices that a classic pop writer wouldn’t make. And it’s really cool. It makes you really different.”

What do you think 1999 Tegan and Sara would think of 2016 Tegan and Sara?

Sara: I honestly think that we would like us. And you know what’s weird? I still feel like that version of me. When I look back at 1999 me, I was so insecure. I didn’t want to be in the band. I didn’t want to live near my family. I was afraid of my identity. I was so unsure of my future. I was in a super-volatile relationship that was really stressful. That version of me who would’ve maybe been stressed out by pop music, that person now would be like, “Oh good, things got way better.”

I don’t think that I knew there was a future in which I could be successful, satisfied, and work, not just in making songs and touring in a band, but we songwrite, and produce, and did a score this year. We’re able to help our friends and family. We have this wonderful, nurturing group of people who have been with us for, like, 20 years. We’ve had the same managers for 13 years. We’ve had the same label for most of our career. All of our relationships are intact. I don’t regret anything that happened in my past, but I feel much happier being here than I did back then.

Is it strange to be at this point in your lives and playing music that feels very visceral, and that people associate with teen angst and growing up?

Tegan: No, because again, it’s like you enter this new era where you’re completely new insiders. You’re angsty, you’re a teenager, you’re vulnerable. This is where we understand it. You get to look back on that time, and you get to speak to that time with new insight.

I think that’s why this new era of Tegan and Sara feels like a new era of Tegan and Sara. It’s not a continuation of what we’ve done. We’ve started a new phase of our lives.

“I was like, ‘Look, straight-up,'” Tegan says, “‘pop’s been great to us.'”

The cover story you did with us in 2013 ends with a quote where you say something like, “If people hate this album, we’ll definitely do it again.” But people obviously liked the album a great deal. Was there anything about the reaction to Heartthrob that made you say, “Okay, we’re going even further on the new album?”

Sara: I don’t remember thinking anything on the last record was going to change our course. I think if anything it just reinforced that the choices we made were the right ones for survival. The band felt more relevant and vibrant and exciting. And even when there was criticism… I liked the criticism on our last record the most.

There’s been some pretty terrible stuff. 

Sara: Oh, brutal. I know it sounds weird, but the worst things people said about our other albums don’t even remotely compare with the worst things people said about our last two records. Back in the day, it wasn’t always easy to be in this band. It was partly a reflection of the times, and how it was a bit of a wild wild west, and people could still say really misogynist, homophobic things about us. People could write us off or underestimate us in a way that would be devastating sometimes. So now if someone’s just like, “I don’t like the way you sound now,” I could care less.

 

How do Taylor Swift superfans compare to Tegan and Sara’s?

Sara: They all seemed lovely. If Taylor likes something, they like it, so it was fine. We got a little grumpiness from a few of our fans like, “Shame on you. What does Taylor represent?” I thought that was really unfair and actually sexist. Here is this incredibly popular, powerful, influential person who has decided to accept us and like us based on exactly who we are. We didn’t change one thing. We’re opinionated, a little left of center, and we’re gay, and we’re political, and Taylor liked us just the way that we are. So why don’t people like her just the way that she is? Just everyone shut up.

I was Googling something about you guys and Taylor, and I came across an article that said, “This is the album that made Taylor Swift’s 1989 and Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION possible.” And it was about Heartthrob. Did you feel like you were ahead of the curve on that? 

Tegan: I don’t think that while we were making Heartthrob we thought about it in terms of wanting to influence people or do this or do that. I think at that point we felt a deep respect from the industry, which is why we made the record in the first place. Very close friends in the industry, other musicians, pop people, had said, “You write really great songs you shouldn’t limit yourselves.” And that was the theme leading up to going into the studio with Greg Kurstin. People were like, “Stop apologizing for writing the songs you do.” And we kept saying, “There’s a ceiling. There’s a ceiling.” And everyone was like, “You’re creating the ceiling. Trust yourselves.”

And so over the course of that record [cycle] lots of people were like, “Oh, this sounds like this. It’s obvious that this person’s trying to sound like you guys.” And then it was interesting because I know [writer/producer] Jack Antonoff talks all the time, because he works with a lot of those artists, about how they highly respect us and would cite us as references of what they wanted to sound like in the studio. The day Heartthrob came out, it was Katy Perry who tweeted that she loved “I Was the Fool.”

The first thing that happened wasn’t like, “Oh, look how influential we are.” What first happened to Sara and I was we went, “Wow, we finally belong somewhere.” Because we spent almost ten years in the indie-rock community and our peers, the bands we looked up to, never cited us as a band they were looking up to. It was an exclusively white, heterosexual male community and I think maybe it would’ve been weird for them. You know what community really embraced us during that entire period that we were indie rock? Metal, emo, pop-punk. Paramore, New Found Glory, Cancer Bats, those were the bands speaking out, saying they loved us. They didn’t sound anything like us, yet they were saying we were influencing them.

Meanwhile our peers in the indie-rock community, they weren’t. And I think when Sara and I started to embrace our pop sensibility and made Heartthrob, it was hilarious.

Sara: We, like, found our people.

Tegan: Yeah, the pop people were like, “Uh, hello.” So for us it’s really great when we meet young artists. Sara was like, “Look, Lorde tweeted the lyrics to ‘Back in Your Head.’” And I was laughing because I had just met Lorde a couple months ago. She was very nice. But the thing is, we didn’t talk about music.

So when Sara showed that to me I was like, “Look, straight-up — pop’s been great to us. And we write pop songs.” And we knew that for a long time. We’re working really hard to make music we hope influences people and excites people. I’m glad people are into it. I’m glad people are influenced by it. It’s nice. It makes you feel like you’re doing something good.

 

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21 minutes ago, LittleDudeNT5 said:

ADORE Heartthrob, but haven't gotten the chance to listen to their newest album. Has anyone enjoyed it? oprah6

I couldn't get into Love You To Death...nor am I interested in the Con Covers ny12

 

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I love Love you to death, its so lightweight and fun and I wish there were more songs. Its a nice vibe album, the whole sound fits together. 

for the con covers, i don really care much except for Hayley and Cyndi 

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On 6/7/2019 at 9:21 PM, ajp said:

New TS9 Album incoming:

 

 

cant wait!!!

been getting into those feat. with Matthew Dear, they are so good. Hope they deliver something between the con and love u 2 death in totally 90 inspired vibes, like their book.

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New TS9 Album incoming:    

cant wait!!! been getting into those feat. with Matthew Dear, they are so good. Hope they deliver something between the con and love u 2 death in totally 90 inspired vibes, like their book.


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