![]() Which I find really interesting because so much of what I consume, and what I find interesting and profound, is through a straight person’s experience. I think they’ve found so much in common with our story that it’s enlightening to them to be able to have their experiences framed within a queer story. The truth is, a lot of the really satisfying conversations I’ve had have been with straight people. SARA QUIN: I really expected gay people would be the ones who would deeply connect with the material. Have you been surprised by how your story has landed in the world? You’ve toured with it and developed and performed a stage show. THE BELIEVER: High School has been out for going on three quarters of a year now. After writing the book, the sisters were startled to realize just how different their experiences of adolescence were, even while living under the same roof, and even though they share all that DNA. The dominant theme of the book-the experience of being seen (or, more frequently, not seen) by their parents, schoolmates, teachers, and especially each other-struck a chord with me. When we spoke by phone, we yakked about gay stuff, and I asked them to reflect on their youth, their coming-out stories, how they experienced sharing High School, and the book’s impact on readers over the course of its first publication year. I’m a friend of both Tegan and Sara and a fan of their band. They both recently moved from Los Angeles to Vancouver with their partners. As Tegan puts it, “We’re raising money for girls in our community, arming them with tools to lead and excel.” They donated a portion of the tour proceeds to the Tegan and Sara Foundation, the duo’s charity focused on fighting for health as well as economic, social, racial, and gender justice for LGBTQ girls and women. Tegan and Sara developed the album tour into a unique stage show where they read from their memoir performed stripped-down, acoustic versions of the songs on the record and projected analog home videos from their high school days. Staying loyal to and protective of the incipient teenage heartbeats in the tracks, they re-recorded the songs they wrote as kids, zhuzhing them gently with the sensibilities they’ve cultivated in their two decades as professionals. It’s an album of their demos from high school, originally recorded on cassette tapes, which they unearthed when researching their memoir. Hey, I’m Just Like You lassos their past to their present. In 2018 they were granted the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, Canada’s highest honor in the performing arts. They’ve been remixed, covered, and have collaborated on projects such as 2014’s Academy Award–nominated theme song for TheLEGO Movie, “Everything Is Awesome!!!” They’ve won JUNO Awards and have been nominated for a Grammy and several Polaris Music Prizes. They’ve gone Gold and Double Platinum, with over a million albums sold. Their songs have hit the Billboard Top 40. They are known for their memorable melodies, compelling lyrics, and easy, often hilarious anecdotal banter onstage. Their career has traversed sonic terrain-from folk/punk, to indie rock, new wave, and ’80s synth, to modern pop. In 1998, Tegan and Sara won Garage Warz, a battle-of-the-bands contest in Calgary it propelled them into what has now been a two-decade career in the music industry. Sara came out to Mom first Mom freaked out Tegan had it easier. In alternating chapters, they narrate their sticky teenage years in Canada in the ’90s, when they ate a lot of acid, discovered their homosexuality, fell in love with their best friends, hooked up with those best friends at secret sleepovers, wrote incendiary love notes, wore striped sweaters and wallet chains, discovered the guitar, wrote songs. In High School, they tell their origin story. The album and memoir were both released in September 2019. They’re queer, are my hairdo heroes, and have released nine studio albums-most recently Hey, I’m Just Like You, a companion album to their memoir, High School. “One person! How fucked-up is that?” They are an indie pop duo: both are singers, songwriters, and multi-instrumentalists. One evening at a backyard dinner party, Sara explained to me: “We were supposed to be one person.” She extended her pointer finger between my face and hers. I looked it up: it means identical, from a single zygote. T egan Quin and Sara Quin are monozygotic twins.
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