Why Tegan and Sara Are the Pop Stars We’ve Been Waiting For

It was Robyn’s "Dancing on My Own" and Alicia Keys’ “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart” that made Sara Quin, one half of the cooler-than-cool music duo Tegan and Sara, realize she wanted to make pop music. "I just wanted to be free on stage and have songs that soar and have people dance," she shares. "I was like, 'Wait, Rihanna's "Umbrella" is a f--king genius piece of music. I want to listen to that.' It just started to infiltrate my brain and my tastes.”

Sara and her twin sister, Tegan Quin, have spent 17 years creating music together—their sound has shifted from alt-folk to indie rock to pop-punk—but this move to pop felt like a natural progression. "We hit our late 20s and felt like we had mastered our sound and our voices," Tegan explains. "Collaborating with Tiësto [on 2009's "Feel It in My Bones"] just cracked open this whole world for us. We started working with lots of EDM artists and thinking outside the box. We aren’t limited by genre—we can constantly change the look, the sound, the feel, the energy of our project."

They used their talent for creating razor-sharp lyrics and radio-ready hooks to create complex pop songs that challenged the genre. And it paid off: Their 2013 album, Heartthrob, gave Tegan and Sara their first pop chart-topping single ("Closer"). Now, they're back again with their latest album, Love You to Death, a danceable, ‘80s-inspired, synth-pop dream.

The timing is perfect: In a year where Beyoncé produces a visual album like Lemonade and Taylor Swift can force the hand of a company like Apple, we need more women acts like Tegan and Sara—strong, intelligent women who speak their minds and won’t be tied down to any genre. And they know that they're in good company. "We never really think about it when it's all men at the top of the charts,” Sara points out. “There isn't always a lot of space or visibility for women in certain genres of music. One thing I really like about pop music is it seems to defy that."

"There's been this desire to have careers that are modeled after powerful women who are killin’ it in the industry,” Tegan adds, citing powerhouses like Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. “Women who have been strong, outspoken, and had depth and integrity in their music, but they've also made music that has been incredibly influential and popular and crosses genres.”

Tegan and Sara have also been incredibly influential, especially for young LGBTQ artists who look to them for inspiration. They were out of the closet 17 years ago when they released their first album—and never looked back.

"I have never felt like being in the closet would have helped us," Sara explains. "It always seemed like a shame to hide such an integral part of one’s identity. It's a relief to see people being more comfortable and casual about it. I think it does wonders for the kids out there who are taking it in and experiencing the music. It is a wonderful reflection of how society can change and become more accepting."

Tegan hopes even more change is on the horizon: "I wish there were more queer women making music in the mainstream. I still feel a responsibility to really push ahead. Not that I want to give in or give up or retire, but there are definitely moments where I wish there was more happening."

That said, she's thankful for the queer artists who are finding success—whether on the charts or as new rising stars. “It's been a wonderful couple years for music and queer culture," says Tegan. "There is this incredible wave of openness with young people around gender fluidity and sexuality fluidity. It’s really amazing, and it's definitely not something I thought we'd see this early in our lifetime. Recently, cool, up-and-coming queer artists like Shura, Shamir, Troye Sivan, and Grimes have been citing us as influencers. It's kind of overwhelming because even though they are really young, they do feel like our peers. They're all writing so intelligently and they're all doing the music themselves; they're all very brilliant.”

Tegan adds that the music industry as a whole has much “less closet-ness and fear compared to film and television.” But she notes that “there are lots of women who are gay in our industry who call themselves bisexual because they're in a different class or genre, so it can be a little limiting for them to admit their sexuality.”

Tegan and Sara’s openness helped inspire their friend and actress Ellen Page to come out with a moving speech in 2014. “We talked a lot about how wonderful and intelligent she is and how important and significant it would be if she came out," Tegan recalls. "I was really proud of her and how she used her celebrity at that moment. I was proud of her for taking the leap and doing it so articulately, but also giving props to so many other amazing people who she had been influenced by. I was honored to be included in that list.”

Their support and active participation in the LGBTQ community doesn’t necessarily correlate with overtly-queer music. In fact, most of their lyrics don’t note whether they’re singing about a man or a woman—and that’s on purpose.

“We weren’t making very queer music," Sara explains. "We never used pronouns, we never really identified the sexuality in the music. But because people knew we were gay it was very easy to sort of be cast aside, like, ‘Oh, this is for gay people.’ It's an interesting time to think about where we started from 17 years ago. I feel like it is harder for people to write our songs off now. There is an effort to sort of make it impossible to write it off. I think that people seem more open to the idea of listening and liking something, without even having to think about or qualify why.”

Case in point: Their new single, “Boyfriend,” has lyrics like, “You treat me like your boyfriend/And trust me like a very best friend.” It's about wanting a woman with a boyfriend to just lock it down already. "I never say that I am singing about a girl, and that was sort of deliberate," Sara says. "I wanted to assign a gender identity to myself that would be surprising and give the song a different twist. I also thought it would be an interesting social experiment to see if people who weren't gay could associate and relate to the song without using pronouns.”

At the end of the day, Tegan and Sara don't really care what critics write about their music—they just want to make a connection with fans. “I don’t think that I’ve ever been worried while writing a song," Tegan says. "I’ve never thought about what people will think when I write. Our objective is to write music that anyone can connect to. I don't think your heart has a gender or a sexuality. I'm just trying to write music that will connect with you.”

Two of the most emotionally raw tracks on Love You to Death, for example, are “100x” and “White Knuckles,” which Sara wrote about their past relationship struggles as sisters. “I didn't necessarily set out to write those songs about Tegan," Sara explains. "I wanted to write about the struggles that I had in my early 20s; my desire to be independent and have my own life and the trajectory of figuring out who I was without Tegan. I am sort of seeing that as a very different era right now in our band and also in my own life. It is just interesting to go back and think about how far we came and how bad and challenging things were, but how much better they are now.”

With the spotlight shining brighter than ever on Tegan and Sara, we're hopeful that the music industry is paving the way for more acts like these two. And they agree.

“Pop music feels like it is very freeing right now,” Sara says excitedly. “It kind of feels like we can go wherever we want, and hopefully people will follow.”

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