Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Tegan And Sara, Sire Records/Warner Music UK 2019.
Tegan and Sara have released eight studio albums and sold well in excess of a million records earning seven gold and one double platinum accreditation in the process.
Hey, I’m Just Like You is the album that accompanies the release of their memoir, High School.
Firstly, about the book.
The Oprah Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and Entertainment Weekly all named it ‘The Most Anticipated Book of Fall.’
High School is a revelatory coming of age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, Canada who grew up in the grunge era battling with the usual teenage identity problems as well as their sexual orientation.
To compound these tensions, they also faced the divorce of their parents and academic meltdown which increased fears about their futures.
The book is written in alternating chapters from both of their perspectives and part of the story includes their first loves and first songs.
And that’s where the album comes in.
The album is comprised of all their earliest, and to this point unpublished, songs written by them between the ages of 15 and 17.
You can hear the younger Tegan and Sara coming to terms with early relationships, rejection, and their own queerness.
When these songs are sung by the more mature 30(something) Tegan and Sara, the meanings become blurred.
For example, the deceptively intense We Don’t Have Fun When We’re Together Anymore could be a lament for a passionless marriage when in fact it’s a teenager venting about alienation from a friendship group.
Tegan and Sara are international stars and darlings of the LGBTQI scene but the beauty of these songs is their universality.
We all feel the same things, love is love, hurt is hurt, although when we’re teenagers everything is magnified and intensely serious.
The album is wonderful.
It’s already been hailed by Billboard, USA Today, and Pitchfork as one of the albums of the year, I recommend that you give it a listen.
I think it’s the best thing they’ve done to date.
