Tegan and Sara’s Sara Quin Talks New Album, Touring, and More

The COVID-19 pandemic may have turned the world upside down, but for Canadian pop duo Tegan and Sara, it sparked the beginning of something new creatively.

Last month, the twin sisters released their 10th studio album, Crybaby, which not only captures the tumultuous times of the pandemic, but also the professional trials and tribulations the pair have gone through over the last couple years. Tegan and Sara have always used music as a way of storytelling, and Crybaby documents personal challenges and evolvement with a new sonic lightness and lyrical rigor.

Additionally, the indie artists saw their formative teen years come to life in Amazon Freevee’s new series High School. Based on their 2019 memoir and created by Clea DuVall, audiences watch as Tegan and Sara, played by TikTok stars Railey and Seazynn Gilliland, discover their passion for music while navigating life, love, and sexuality in high school.

Tegan and Sara are currently traveling the country with their Crybaby tour, which will be at Denver’s Gothic Theatre on November 8. Sara had some time to talk more about the new album and more with OFM.

Congratulations on the release of Crybaby! Can you begin by telling us more about the inspiration behind this album?

I think like a lot of people, the pandemic was fairly disruptive to both my personal and professional life. Tegan and I, we’ve been touring since 1999, so just the act of being in one place for so long, I’m not sure we’ve entirely reconciled how that impacted us. It was very destabilizing at times, but it was also so restful. At that period of our life, I think we will always look back on it as being creatively abundant. We suddenly had a lot of time to dream, make things, and be creative. Not just write songs, but we developed and made a TV show and wrote a graphic novel.

So, I think Crybaby was born out of that. Then specifically for me, I was in the middle of trying to become a parent with my partner when the pandemic happened. Throughout the shutdown and lockdowns, we were sort of starting and stopping our process. It was actually while we were in our last recording session for Crybaby that I found out my wife was pregnant. A lot of these songs, it may not be entirely obvious on the surface, but much of what I wrote for this album was sort of coming from an acute drama in my life. A crisis if you will. Is this going to happen or not?

There were times where I was on the same page as my partner and was like, this is going to happen, and we’ve got to keep trying, but then there were times where I was like, are we sure? Do we need this? Do we really want to try again? I think that caused its own kind of existential turmoil. Obviously, feelings were intensified during the pandemic, but I think this record is a hoot. It doesn’t come off as a sad record. I think it comes off as a very frenetic, triumphant kind of sound. That was also manifesting what we hoped would end up being a new sort of positive era in our lives once the pandemic was over.

I totally get that. How has motherhood been treating you, by the way?

So far, so good! He’s four months old, and he’s such a happy guy. The adults are exhausted, but he still seems to be getting quite a good amount of sleep and what he needs (laughs). I thought a lot about being a parent over the years, and it wasn’t necessarily something that I wanted for myself in terms of carrying a baby. That required me to find a partnership and a relationship where they wanted it probably more than I did. It’s been an interesting journey, but the act of being a mother and the feelings that it brought up for me are very intense and abundant, and I love it.

Crybaby is Tegan and Sara’s 10th studio album. How meaningful has this milestone been for you both?

Honestly, I’m just grateful that we still have a career, fans that want to hear our music, and people who are willing to go into business with us. Tegan and I ultimately funded this record ourselves, and we shopped it around until we found a great partner, Mom + Pop Music, out in New York. The partnership feels very fruitful for both of us. I think we bring our own sort of premier legacy to them, and even though they’ve been around for over 10 years, they’re still a young company with a lot of creative, wonderful thinking people who have a nimble approach to releasing music.

As a businessperson, not just an artist, it’s inspiring. It’s inspiring to think about longevity and what that means in an industry that often, and rightfully so, makes a lot of space for young people and their ideas. We’re not young anymore, so I think figuring out how to be true to ourselves, authentic, and nurture the fan base that we spent 20 years building while also thinking about how else we can spread the gospel of Tegan and Sara and find new people, it’s been fun and creatively challenging. In terms of it being 10 albums, I don’t think about that. I’m just glad we’re still around.

A couple singles were released beforehand including “Smoking Weed Alone,” “Fucking Up What Matters Most,” and “Yellow.” How have they been received by listeners?

So far, people really seem to like them. Crybaby is a fun album, and not in the sense that it’s light. There’s a lot of texture to these songs, both lyrically and sonically, and that feels fresh to me. We had a really small budget for the videos, so we had to get very creative with how we were going to visually represent this album, and it ended up being super fun. I’d say these are probably some of my favorite videos ever, honestly. The reaction has been great from our fans, and we don’t put a ton of weight in reviews or those kinds of things. Does the crowd get excited when we play our new music? They do, so great. As long as they’re not running out the door, I think it’s pretty positive.

Ultimately, what do you always hope audiences take away from your music?

Intention matters. I’m never going to make something that I’m embarrassed of, or I think will sully the Tegan and Sara legacy. I really care about everything that we do. Whether it’s the music, a TV show, or the books we write, I don’t do anything for the fame and glory. I just love being creative. I’m an artist, and I want to keep being able to do that. So, I always ask myself, do I feel proud of this? Did I compromise myself in ways that I can’t live with? This far, the answer is no.

We cannot wait for your Denver appearance on November 8 at the Gothic Theatre. What can one always expect from a Tegan and Sara concert?

I think we’re probably more of a live band than a recorded band. We love to be in the studio making albums, but I think where we really connect with our audience is in a room, and we always had the added layer of being able to banter and talk to them. During the lean years where we didn’t have a big fan base, where we really relied on touring to keep the engine going in our band, our secret weapon was that we could stand on stage and tell people what was going on, and they felt a connection to that.

Especially queer women who were out, we could talk transparently about our relationships, the homophobia we would experience, whatever. I think that was really new. To stand in front of an audience and declare that not with shame, I think that was fresh for people, and we still try to bring that to our shows. I want people to feel like they know us better when they leave a concert.

Have you and Tegan always had a passion for singing and songwriting?

When I look back at us as little kids, I think we were very musical. Not necessarily in the traditional sense, like Justin Bieber, who had gotten drumsticks when he was four years old and was putting out a sick beat on a bowl or something. Tegan and I loved listening to music, and I think as soon as we were given the opportunity to play music, it was pretty innate. We weren’t necessarily, like, prodigious musical piano players or something like that, but we were musical. We had an instinct, and we started writing songs almost right away. It was almost inborn. I just felt like I knew how to do it.

Another one of your more recent projects is High School, the TV series based on your best-selling memoir. How did that come to fruition, and what did it feel like to see your lives turned into a series?

We are very good friends with Clea DuVall, who helped us develop the show, directed, and wrote a good portion of the episodes. She was somebody who we had talked about doing something with, and when we sent her the manuscript for our book, she just had a vision. She was like, “I feel like we could develop this into something for television that would be really special and unique.” Because of the pandemic, we had the space and time to really flesh this idea out and take it around.

It’s been an amazing experience because not only do I feel very proud of the show and think that it is special, but I do think it is an outlier in the way that it looks at queerness and queerness outside of just romantic relationships. One of the things that we hoped to do with the book, which I think has ultimately been done with the television show, is offer a slightly different perspective on what it feels like to be a queer teenager.

Then also as an artist, I’m a girl, and I never saw girls represented as artists in a way that connected with me. I always thought, oh, we get to watch the 85th movie about a boy who finds a guitar and starts a band. I was hoping that we could offer a universal look at the experience of finding yourself and finding your passion for something. I love the show, and I feel really proud of it.

As you should be! I absolutely loved Railey and Seazynn Gilliland’s portrayals of you and Tegan.

Oh my God, these girls are brilliant! They had never acted or played music, and Tegan and I found them on TikTok. I think what initially grabbed us about them is that they’re twins. Nothing against other twins, for the record, but when I saw Railey and Seazynn, they reminded me of how Tegan and I were at that age. The fact that we were in the middle of developing a TV show about that age group, it felt like fate. We needed to find twins to play us at that age, and then we suddenly found twins at that age.

We have turned their world upside down. They were working at a pizza restaurant in Fresno, and we scooped them up being like, you have to change everything about your life. You have to come to Canada, work 12 hours a day, and do all of these things. It looks like a dream, but it’s so much hard work and it required so much of them, but I adore them for doing it because they’re amazing. I think they’re going to be stars.

Any word on if there will be a Season 2?

We’re still waiting to hear. I have to imagine given the press, the praise for the show, and I know people are watching, so we’re feeling very positive, but I’m trying to not get ahead of myself. If it’s one season and that’s all we get, it is what it is. It’s a beautiful show, and it’ll live as an artifact, but I really hope we get a chance to do another season.

What are some future goals you and Tegan hope to accomplish with your careers and platforms?

There’s always something in my brain. I think at some point, I’d like to do a solo album, but that’s one of the scariest things I can imagine. Then that starts to creep in of, well, if it scares you, maybe it’s something we’re aiming for. Tegan and I are idea people, so we always have 50 things that we’re talking about trying to do. I’ll be scared the day that I wake up and I don’t have a to-do list of 45 ideas.

Stay up-to-date and connect with Tegan and Sara by following them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @teganandsara, or visit their official website, teganandsara.com. Crybaby is available on all digital streaming platforms and visit gothictheatre.com for more information and to purchase tickets for their upcoming Denver appearance.

Photos courtesy of Tegan and Sara