![]() ![]() She had long ago closed off that chapter of her creative life. For weeks, the digitized versions of the tapes sat on her computer. “The second I started listening, I was laughing: ‘These are the best melodies!’” “I could sit and write 20 more songs that I’m not going to love more than these ones,” Tegan says. These demos unlocked those feelings again. There’s nothing like your favorite music in high school, when you can love something so much it physically aches. She was drawn to their rawness and melodrama, yes, but also their worldliness. The recordings were low-quality, but Tegan loved them right away. Last year, as they worked on assembling High School, Tegan and Sara came across cassettes featuring dozens of their earliest songs. Look at what we pulled together after 20 years. If you were sitting with any guy right now talking about a new project, he’d be like”-she slumps back in her chair and lowers her voice-“‘I’m fucking amazing! I’m about to drop the coolest fucking thing!’ And I’m just like, fine. “I'm just saying,” Tegan continues, “we found all this footage and all these photos and wrote a book, and we’re piecing it all together to talk about something that every single one of us will relate to: being an adolescent and feeling hormonal and sad and depressed and freaked out and unsure. ![]() But the familiarity struck her: How many times over the years had men-friends, musicians she admired, random people she had sat next to on airplanes-given her unsolicited advice about how they could make their music less simple (that was the word they always used) and more interesting to them? But another question nagged at her: Why-after eight studio albums, a million records sold, a handful of awards-had she believed them on some level? ![]() Now 39, Sara hadn’t seen the letter in decades. Told in alternating chapters from each of their perspectives, the book revisits the traumas and transformations of their acid-fueled dirtbag teen years, during which they discovered music and navigated their sexuality as young queer women in mid-1990s Calgary. Sara uncovered the letter last year amid old journals and lyrics while researching her and Tegan’s upcoming memoir, High School, out now. He thought he was being helpful: “I think you guys have a real chance or else I wouldn’t be writing this.” and then proceeded to list all the ways they could be better: chords they should use, techniques they should consider, changes they should make to their singing styles. The next day, they woke up to a three-page, front-to-back single-spaced letter from a friend of a cousin, a guy in his 20s, who congratulated them on the performance. So when an aunt they were visiting asked them to perform for her and some friends, they pulled out their acoustic guitars and sang, as they’d done at open mics and house parties, a few growling songs about their identities and uncertain futures, their dueling perspectives united by just similar-enough voices. It was the summer after they had graduated from high school, and the twins had decided to pursue music instead of going to university. Tegan and Sara Quin received their first piece of “fan mail” when they were 17. ![]()
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