Tegan and Sara w/ Dragonette

Tegan and Sara are still evolving the way they collaborate, even 20 years into recording together and 20 more as twin sisters. For their 10^th studio album, Crybaby, they got inside each other’s songs in a whole new way. Informed by some of the intense new experiences they’ve had the past couple years—the stress and trauma of the pandemic, the upheaval of changing their entire professional team including their label and management, other personal trials and tribulations—the twins found some of their most potent inspiration yet and a willingness to try doing things differently. Although the source of the title Crybaby isn’t revealed until several tracks in, as a refrain in the bridge to the deliriously catchy “Under My Control,” the word is meaningful for the album as a whole. In the past, they both tried to avoid using the words “cry” and “baby” in their songs, out of feeling both words had become cringe-inducing clichés. But similar to naming their chart-topping 2013 album Heartthrob to reappropriate the word from its masculine connotation, they wanted to explore new contexts for the words, separately and together. The twins have begun to feel a renewed sense of intensity around all of their creative projects, whether the upcoming album or the TV show or various other endeavors they’ve undertaken.