There was a layer of distance that I afforded myself so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Even when I had a girlfriend and I was having sex with her, I still imagined myself as being not gay. And it was very much a process, wasn’t it? NL: In the book you and Tegan write so movingly about getting to grips with your sexuality – with being queer. Do I want to dress like that now? No! But to look back and have love and affection for that version of myself is a very empowering thing. Because the clothes weren’t just clothes they were about the kind of people we wanted to be and the kind of people we wanted to spend time with.

And I have such admiration for that person who did that and found other people who dressed like that and other communities who supported those ideas. But we put those clothes on every single day and looked in the mirror and thought ‘we look so fucking cool’. I went out every day looking how I wanted to look even though people laughed at us – they said we dressed like garbage and that we were ugly. Sara Quin: I think by the time we were finishing the memoir, I had such admiration for myself as a teenager. Nick Levine: What did you learn about your teenage self from writing this memoir? With both the book and album about to drop, I spoke to Sara Quin about the complicated and sometimes painful emotions she experienced while working on these projects. Alongside the book, they’ve re-recorded a variety of unreleased demos they made as teenagers for their new album, Hey, I’m Just Like You, a cute fusion of their musical past and present.

Their excellent new memoir High School offers a moving and revealing glance back at the sisters’ formative years making music, going to raves and slowly getting to grips with their gayness. Now, 20 years after they released debut album Under Feet Like Ours, Tegan and Sara are allowing themselves to reflect on their personal evolution. In 2016, they launched the Tegan and Sara Foundation with the stated aim of ‘fighting for health, economic justice and representation for LGBTQ girls and women’. The Canadian twin sisters have always written super-catchy songs, but over the years their early indie-pop sound has blossomed into something glossier and more electronic: for their last two albums, 2013’s Heartthrob and 2016’s Love You to Death, they collaborated with Adele-producer Greg Kurstin Closer, a joyous head-rush of a club banger, was even featured on Glee.Īs their profile has grown, the Quin sisters have also established themselves as significant queer voices in the music industry. Tegan and Sara aren’t scared of musical evolution.

Tegan and sarah interview