Article & Interview: Tom Perrotta
It’s hard to have a long career in pop music. Just ask all the one-hit wonders and sophomore slumpers, all the sure things who turned out to be yesterday’s news. It’s hard to keep a band together, hard to hold the fans’ attention. And it’s really, really hard to keep writing good songs, record after record, year after year.
Which brings us to Tegan and Sara, and their stunning new record, Heartthrob. If you know and love Tegan and Sara’s music, as I do, the exuberant, polished sound of Heartthrob will come as a shock, almost a deliberate provocation. What happened to those neurotic, self-deprecating indie rockers, the twins from Canada obsessively chronicling their crushes and heartbreaks? When did they become so confident and radio-friendly, so unapologetically mainstream? Are Tegan and Sara pop stars? Why would they even want to be?
After all, it would have been easy enough for Tegan and Sara to just make another record, keep the old machine humming. Things have been going well for them for a long time. Six albums in thirteen years, a passionately devoted international audience, some serious brushes with commercial success, an impressive catalogue of consistently wonderful songs, to my mind one of the most striking and underrated bodies of work in the past decade. But they finished their last tour feeling oddly dissatisfied. They weren’t kids anymore—they’d just turned thirty, and they wanted more. They felt restless, couldn’t understand why they weren’t reaching more people. So Tegan and Sara took a deep breath and a long look in the mirror, and popped into that nearby phone booth.
And out came Heartthrob.
“No one will confuse this with any of our other records,” Sara says. “It’s got a bigger, bolder, happier sound.” Tegan is explicit about the supersized ambitions motivating the record. “I kept asking myself: Can I hear this in an arena? Can I hear this on a teenager’s iPod as they’re riding the bus to school?”
The new album doesn’t just sound different, it represents a more collaborative way of making music. For the first time, the sisters actually wrote a lot of the songs together (in the past there were Tegan songs and Sara songs), and they surrendered more control than usual in the studio, dividing songs between 3 producers (Greg Kurstin, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, and Mike Elizondo) and a handful of outside musicians to capture the sound they were looking for. Tegan and Sara are both effusive about Kurstin’s role in the process.
For all the superficial differences, though, Heartthrob bears the true hallmarks of a Tegan and Sara record. The songs are terrific, full of lust and longing and regret, bouncing between the familiar poles of erotic rapture (“Closer”) and post-breakup despondency (“How Come You Don’t Want Me”). But the lyrics seem less confessional than usual, a little more universal and philosophical, as if Tegan and Sara are reflecting on the experience of passion rather than undergoing its ecstasies and torments in real time. For every urgent outburst—“Does your body shake when you get around me? Does your body ache when you think about me?” (“I Couldn’t Be Your Friend”)—there’s a moment of calm reflection, a retrospective clarity about past relationships: “When I think of you I think of your skin golden brown from the sun/Your arms outstretched your hair cut shorter than it’d been /But still blowing in the wind” (“Drove Me Wild”). There’s a hard-won maturity in these lyrics, hidden beneath the glossy surface of the music, and a willingness to tackle subjects beyond the confines of romance. This is especially evident in the striking song, “I’m Not Your Hero,” which examines the difficulty of maintaining artistic independence and personal autonomy in a politicized world: “I’m not their hero but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t brave/I never walked the party line doesn’t mean that I was never afraid.”
Heartthrob gives us Tegan and Sara in their superhero tights and capes, ready to conquer the pop universe, and the new outfits suit them just as well as their old-school jeans and T-shirts. Don’t be surprised if you hear these songs in an arena, or blasting on a car radio, or leaking from a teenager’s earbuds on a bus. That’s what they’re made for. And don’t worry if you experience a brief sense of disorientation the first couple of times you hear them, a momentary inability to put a name to those familiar voices. By the time you realize who you’re listening to, you’ll already be singing along.
What kind of headspace were you in emotionally when you began work on Heartthrob? The sound of the album is a departure from your previous work. How would you say it’s different?
Tegan: Sara and I met in March 2011 in New York to write together for the new record. After a few hours of working, we decided to scrap the whole idea of the trip and just drink margaritas and hang out – as sisters. We had only been off a few months and Sara really stressed that she wanted more downtime before she started to work. Although I continued to write throughout 2011 (our year off from touring), it was a meeting we took with Rob Cavallo (Chairman of Warner Bros. Records) a few months later that ended up inspiring the real writing. Rob encouraged us to write about what we were afraid to write about. His feedback to us was that we needed to be brave and bold and not toe the line about who we were, what we wanted to do, how we saw ourselves or perceived our music or experiences. For years, Sara had been telling me to change my perspective and write with a different voice. It was only when Rob said what he did that I understood what I needed to do, and what Sara had been asking me to do.
Sara: Generally our demo process is quite solitary and we often enter the studio with nearly finished ideas. This time around we were feeling energized about writing a lot and agreed there should be a willingness to tinker with arrangements, tempos and keys in a way that we hadn’t allowed in the past. We had talked about our goals internally and we sought out producers that we thought would push us to strengthen the material not just sonically but also lyrically and melodically. There was a confidence about the songs even in demo form, but we wanted to make room for them to continue to expand and get bigger as the recording process unfolded. We didn’t want anyone to mistake this album for something we’d already done in the past.
What influenced the sound of the album and how do you describe that sound?
Tegan: I listened to a lot of my favourite bands from growing up when I was writing: Cyndi Lauper, Tom Petty, early Bruce Springsteen, The Police and Kate Bush. I also listened to a lot of electronic music like Animal Collective, Yeasayer, Four Tet, and Pendulum. I wanted great songs with really neat soundtracks underneath them.
Sara: Initially, the demos took on a much more programmed/electronic feel. (Producer) Greg Kurstin described a finished sound that would be bold and dynamic. Steering clear of any of our signature sounds from previous albums (mainly guitars) we tried to focus on enhancing our vocals and the melodies using instruments and keyboards we hadn’t relied on heavily in the past. We wanted to make a different kind of pop record and we strove to make the songs more ambitious than anything we’d recorded before.
Do you feel that Heartthrob is a break from your “self-deprecating indie rock” image?
Tegan: Yes! Part of what inspired the songs on this record was a conversation we had early on about NOT being so self-deprecating in our music, but also in real life. We are actually quite confident and successful (at life and love!) and so we needed to stop projecting the same image. It was time to update the “Tegan and Sara sound”. We wanted to cover topics like love and relationships but from a different angle. I’d never romanticized love the way that I did on this record before. I had never written a romantic, sweet, nostalgic love song. I had never been bold before.
Sara: I personally loved the idea that Heartthrob is a response to Sainthood. Sainthood (and arguably our “self-deprecating indie rock” image) represented something much subtler, deliberate and sometimes safe. Heartthrob is raw and confident. The writing is more direct and the hooks are meant to inspire less introspective listening, for a larger group experience. Sainthood was about the isolation and silence of longing, while Heartthrob embellishes the public feedback loop of desire (both as the object and the admirer).
Lyrically, what did you find yourself drawn to writing about? Are the songs less confessional and perhaps more universal this time around?
Tegan: I definitely think our songwriting has become more universal. I think this was a natural evolution over 10 years and six records. Although we’re covering the same topics (love, relationships, self), we’re doing it in a fresh way. And I think the balance on the record between confessional songs and empowered fist-pumpers is more balanced now.
Sara: I think there is still a confessional nature to songs sung in the first person no matter how universal the theme. But I certainly think the inspiration for these songs came from a broader list of experiences. We’ve always cast ourselves as the rejected, but this time around we found ourselves trying to break out of that narrative to tell a more dynamic story.
Any specific focus tracks you’d like to give some insight into?
Tegan: I think “Closer” is a great example of a song that shows our growth. It’s our first “make-out” song. It’s high-energy and positive. It’s truly about a moment and not a relationship! I think musically it really showcases our writing and our sonic jump.
“I Was A Fool” is another standout to me. We don’t do a lot of “singing out” or holding notes, etc.… We’re very rhythmic singers. This was something a producer pointed out while we were writing. So I was really attempting a few different things with this song. I wanted to write a song that was about two people who we were IN LOVE, without glazing over how incredibly difficult the relationship was. I wrote it on guitar, but right away moved the song to piano. And I also wanted to stretch my voice, so I struggled with a chorus where we could “sing out”. I think it turned out awesome. It was a track that some of the other producers we were thinking of working with were stuck on just keeping as an acoustic track. Greg Kurstin was the first person who talked about making it a huge pop song. That’s how I knew he was right for us. He saw beyond the demos.
Sara: “I’m Not Your Hero” was inspired by a decade-long conversation I’ve been having with myself and others about the divisive nature of solidarity. It’s easy to fight with people you disagree with, but I’ve struggled deeply with feeling marginalized and isolated amongst those whom I’ve identified as my peers/allies. This is not uncommon of course! When you’re a group of people who feel silenced, it can be frustrating to have someone speak for you if their message diverges from yours. But, it’s made it a challenge to feel supported and that ties in with my identity as a queer woman and the lack of visibility I experienced when I was growing up. I didn’t know how to imagine my future because I had never seen examples of it in the media. Thankfully that has changed so much!
“Now I’m All Messed Up” was a late addition to the album. I wanted to write a ballad, something that would feel tortured but that would also be a sing-along at shows and in bedrooms everywhere. I had been fooling around with the line, “Now I’m all messed up, sick inside wondering where, where you’re leaving your make-up”, for a while. The idea of the girl you love leaving her make-up on someone else’s sheets (or god forbid anywhere else) is a torture. I wanted it to be the kind of song that you discovered on the album, not as obvious as some of the other material we were working on. I wanted it to be the soundtrack for relationships/breakups that have disfigured your rational thinking.
How do you want people to feel when they hear the music?
Tegan: Sara said it early on…She wanted people to hear the record and not even know it was initially us. She wanted the record to be unrecognizable but still undeniably Tegan and Sara. It’s our job to create, not recreate. We can’t go backwards and remake The Con or So Jealous or Sainthood. As a band and as writers, we have to keep pushing our music and ourselves to new places. I want people to hear that evolution. I want them to hear change. I want them to hear our maturity. But I also want them to hear their own stories blasting from the speakers. We most definitely want people to hear themselves and their experiences reflected back. The average listener out there isn’t going to give two shits about what keyboard I used or what state of mind I was in when I was writing the song…They’re going to think about how the song makes them feel. So, I hope they feel like they can hear themselves and their own story.