On their ninth album, Tegan and Sara open up a time capsule of sorts. For Hey, I’m Just Like You, the twin sisters went back and found some demo cassettes from the early days of their career. We’re talkin’ like, awkward teenage years. The story goes that they unearthed these songs while gathering materials for a memoir aptly titled ‘High School’. It is the self-proclaimed origin story of Tegan and Sara, and really, it wouldn’t be complete without musical accompaniment.
Long before they were influential pop stars and LGBTQ icons, Tegan and Sara were just like the rest of us. They were in their own, respective bedrooms worrying about the trials and tribulations of adolescence. It’s easy to forget that superstars – of any kind – are human beings just like the rest of us. No one is larger than life. With Hey, I’m Just Like You, the duo is nodding back at those years, as if to say “I see you. I understand you. And everything turned out alright.”
They’re also looking out at their sea of fans to remind them they’re not alone. It’s an endearing sentiment and an equally interesting exercise for a songwriter. Tegan and Sara have literally taken everything they know now and applied it to what they wrote way back when.
Hey, I’m Just Like You encapsulates both of their signature sounds in a way that’s sure to delight Tegan and Sara fans across the board. They’ve plugged in their guitars once again and applied them to songs like ‘I’ll Be Back Someday’ which wouldn’t have been out of place in any coming-of-age rom-com at the turn of the century. They’ve also transformed a few of these bedroom demos – the title track for example – into potential stadium-level singalongs, something more akin to their recent outputs. You can almost hear a chorus of troubled teenagers, belting along from the bedrooms wishing someone – even their mum – would understand them. Not mocking it – I was there once.
When I was 14, I was in a band that recorded an album called Box of Cheerleaders. Yeah, seriously. The album cover – and I remember this distinctly – was a box of Wheaties cereal altered to say “Cheerleaders”, and you get where I’m going. The thought of revisiting those songs today is rather embarrassing. Not that I’m ashamed of who I was as a kid, but let’s just say the expected maturity level of a person is vastly different when you’re that age and I have no doubt I lived up to that. (There may or may not have been a song about masturbation in the mix…)
But maybe, just maybe, revisiting some of those songs would be cathartic. It would be a glance back into the mind of a former self, a chance to say “hey kid – you survived that shit.” And that right there is the true beauty of music. Just like books and photographs and so on, music doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There’s definitely an aspect of art that directly reflects the time it was made in, but that’s not all of it. Music, especially to the ones making it, is most like a diary. It’s a permanent record of how you’ve navigated the highs and the lows in all of their beautiful, frustrating glory. Sometimes, you listen back and the lows seem pretty silly. Tegan and Sara inevitably felt that with a few of these songs but brought them into the 21st century with a new perspective. Is this the best record they’ve ever put out? Of course not. They essentially wrote it when they were teenagers. But because of that, it might just be the most sentimental thing they’ve ever recorded, and there’s certainly something to be said about that.
Haiku Review
Tegan and Sara,
Reimagining the past
Is quite humbling ,
Listen to Tegan & Sara on Spotify and Apple music.
