The CBC books team who run Canada Reads first reached out a few years ago, but I kept saying no. Too big of a commitment, too much time, too hard to plan for, book around (I really had a lot of excuses). Even last year, when our schedule was relatively calm, I turned it down because I wanted a full year out of the spotlight. As 2026 crept closer, I caved. I love books and I love reading, and I want to be apart of encouraging more of that, so…I am doing it!

For anyone who doesn’t know, Canada Reads is a debate show where five panelists each champion a book by a Canadian author. Over several days, one book is voted out at the end of each episode until a winner is chosen. Even if your book is eliminated, you stay and keep debating, knocking out the other books until one is left standing. It’s competitive, public, and nerve-wracking, which is part of why I resisted for so long.

Another reason is that Sara did it years ago. She was on Canada Reads in 2011, championing Essex County by Jeff Lemire. At that point in our career we rarely did things on our own, so watching her agree to go solo felt wild and honestly kind of terrifying. If I’m being honest, I don’t remember watching. Too nervous.

She showed up with her Demi Moore in Ghost bowl cut and soft leather jacket and was voted out in the first round. The Canadian media dubbed her a “kingmaker” because of how influential she was over the course of the week. But what stayed with me was that she found it very stressful, and she worried she’d failed the author. There was no way I was going to do that!

But here I am…doing it.

Last year, after a number of calls about my favorite types of books, The Canada Reads team sent me my first box of books to read. It was extremely exciting. Although I’ve been a musician for more than 30 years, I don’t collect gear or memorabilia. You’d be hard-pressed to figure out I’m a musician if you toured my place without me in it. But I love books. They’re on display in every room and are the one thing I insist on collecting, to the chagrin of my partner Sofia, who is desperate for me to let go of the stacks spreading over every surface of our house.

The Cure for Drowning by Logan Paylor, the book I chose to champion, was the first or second book I read. Eventually I went on to read 17 books by Canadian authors, but The Cure for Drowning just stuck with me. It’s a beautiful, sprawling historical novel with family at its center. There’s a love story, a love triangle, war, death, and so much longing. Historical fiction can be dense and hard to get into, and it’s not everyone’s genre, but I think this book will be accessible to just about anyone who picks it up. Logan is a first-time author and deserves all the praise the book has received so far. I just hope I do it justice when I champion it in April.

MEET THE 2026 CANADA READS CONTENDERS

I’ve now finished reading the four other Canada Reads books this year. I enjoyed them immensely. That was one of my reservations about doing Canada Reads. Art is subjective. My favorite book won’t be your favorite book, but that doesn’t mean mine is better than yours. I was honest with the producers that I struggled to imagine myself being competitive. I’m struggling to imagine how to knock out the other books, especially since they are all being championed by the sweetest people I’ve ever met. But I’ve been reassured that once the debates begin, your competitiveness comes out. I sure hope so.

I’m glad I agreed to do Canada Reads. I love reading, and I hope that whatever attention I bring to Canada Reads and The Cure For Drowning, encourages people to pick up more books. To me, reading is a passport to wherever you want to go. An inexpensive way to explore other worlds, cultures, people, and ideas.

I encourage you to pick up the five books chosen for Canada Reads this year so you can follow along during the debates in April. Let me know in the comments which is your favorite or just tell me what your favorite book is!

Happy reading,

TRQ Reads Too

A year ago, I made the pledge to leave social media. An experiment of sorts—but mostly just a break. A much needed one. Over the last six years Sara and I have released a lot: books, TV, music. All of it demanded an extreme number of posts.

It’s funny because even before social media or YouTube, Sara and I were already chronicling ourselves—our friends, our lives, our music. In high school we captured all of it on cassette tapes and MiniDV. I learned to edit both in Broadcasting and Communications and, for a hot minute, thought maybe I’d be a documentarian.

Music took off in 1998, and Sara and I ventured out into the world—mostly alone—and documenting became a way to show our family and friends what we’d been doing when we got home. Soon we were spending large sums to host videos on our website, and talking our record label into releasing live albums and DVDs that included our home videos from the road to show our fans!

Then Myspace came along in 2004. We had to be strong-armed into participating, and even now I’d say we never really drank the Kool-Aid over there. But it was undeniable: the more listens and plays we got, the more radio we got. The more radio we got, the more the label invested in marketing. And something else happened—people started buying our albums, buying tickets to our shows, and we finally started making a living doing what we were doing. It was nearly seven years into our career, but the internet was helping.

After that we embraced social media because it allowed us to circumvent traditional media—which had ignored us, and often kind of gotten us wrong—and we liked talking directly to our fans through our posts. But like everything good, social media soon felt corrupt, capitalized, taken over by ads and strangers and, eventually, the algorithm.

Mark Zuckerberg himself said last year that Facebook isn’t really about connecting you with friends anymore. That captured something I’d felt for a long time—our social media wasn’t really about connecting with our fans anymore either. It felt more and more like we were being pushed to go viral, to find new fans, to get likes and attention in whatever way we could. By 2024, the compulsion to manufacture controversy just to stand out in the onslaught of content created by everyone was overwhelming, and truly exhausting. I didn’t want to play along.

Meanwhile—starting in 2008 with Prop 8—for nearly fifteen years, we weren’t just growing our band, releasing music, touring the world. We were also becoming spokespeople for LGBTQ+ issues. And with that came the pressure to speak out about everything else—politics, elections, war, famine, genocide, all marginalized people, rescue dogs, books we loved, hair products! We—anyone with a working internet connection or smartphone—were expected to be pundits, talking heads, experts, and salespeople. And we were all selling to each other.

Sara started calling social media the Home Shopping Network. Whether people were selling a guacamole recipe or a new single, it felt like everyone was trying not just to be famous, but to make a living online. And why not? The last decade we’ve watched people become unbelievably wealthy for doing things we all do all the time—put on make-up, clean our bathrooms, gossip about celebrities. It all looked so easy. (It’s not.)

Though I knew what I was selling, as an artist I was becoming more and more unclear—even after having been a content creator for twenty years—about what exactly I was supposed to be making content about when we released new music. Certainly not about the music we were releasing—those posts were duds.

Sara and I had been going non-stop for two decades. Not just dropping records every few years anymore, but layering in retrospectives, graphic novels, books, TV, documentaries, tours, and opinions in between. Create, create, create. And those creations need posts to sell them. Sell, sell, sell.

Even if you’re at home with nothing to sell, find something to sell! Your birthday! Your album from ten years ago! Your dog!

There was no off-season.

But I needed an off-season. Badly.

It occurred to me at the end of 2024, that we had nothing to sell in 2025. It was a making year, not a marketing year (gross). So, I vowed to stay off social media. I wouldn’t post. I wouldn’t scroll. I wouldn’t even look at the content people texted me. For a whole year. And I did it! It’s been one year!

I won’t bore you with a list of all the ways being off social media changed my life. I won’t belabour my experience. I can only take you to the parking lot at the trailhead—you have to walk the path yourself if you want to. I’ll just say this: it was 100% positive.

I shopped less, spent less, I read more, and I felt calmer, happier, more focused, and more aware of what was actually going on inside me. I looked around at the world and saw things I would have missed if I’d been on my phone. I started to think about my phone less, touch it less, forget it for hours every day. My social circle shrank (in a good way), I leaned into my actual friends, and experienced the joy of hearing about them/their lives and sharing about myself/my life directly, as opposed to on social media.

The noise, the worry, the constant contrasting and comparing, the competitiveness—it all evaporated.

I have no doubt it was terrible for our band’s algorithm (Sorry Sara). I have no doubt I missed stuff (good and bad). I will not lie to you and say there weren’t times when I was tempted beyond measure to sneak a look or that I worried about missing out on things. But if that is the con list for quitting, well, I’ll take it.

So, all this to say, I’m committed to taking another year off social media, with one addendum. If we release something—be it music, or something else—I will of course create content and have my management or Sara post it. I will use Substack from time to time. But I will not download social media or use it in 2026.

And typing that feels incredible.

The temptation to wrap up this post by telling you about the places I visited, the books I read, the music I loved, the adventures I got up to, how Georgia is (she’s great)—is high. But I won’t. One of the biggest gifts of 2025 was realizing I didn’t need to build a wall around myself to have privacy. It’s as simple as stopping the flow of information on the internet.

Instead, I’ll just tell you this: I spent most of this year making things.

When Sara and I wrapped up in 2024, I was exhausted, and I am no longer that. I wasn’t sure we’d ever tour again, but we will. I wasn’t sure the world needed more T&S. And maybe it doesn’t. But we are making things, and however, and whenever it comes out, I hope you’ll be there to receive it. But another thing I learned this past year is that it doesn’t matter if anything we make ever gets released, because making it is where I derive almost all the pleasure I get from being creative.

What a relief to finally learn that at 45!!!!

Wishing you the 2026 you want,
Tegan

Loners!

Thank you again for joining me yesterday on my solo zoom chat! And, another big thank you to my co-host Darius, for being a great sport! As promised, I wanted to share a few things in case I breezed past them too quickly.

Read more

Welcome back! 

This week - more answers from the CRUSH book tour. This time I'm answering questions from the Toronto event we did in support of CRUSH! I cover everything from my favorite Chappell Roan song to what tattoo I would have gotten if I could have gotten one in Junior High! Plus tons about future collaborations, adaptations and music! If you want to know the status of my drivers license, our next album or get some advice for surviving junior high, have a listen. (Or read the transcript below). 

As always, thanks for subscribing. Check out Tillie Walden's books here, pick up a copy of Junior High and Crush here and listen to my latest playlist on Spotify here. Vancouver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, your answers are coming up next! 

Thanks, 

Tegan 

Hello everybody. It's Tegan. I'm back this week on, I Think We're Alone Now answering questions from the Toronto stop of the Crush book tour. I want to thank everybody who came out to all the book events in October. We got way too many questions every night to answer them in person, so I am diligently making my way through and answering them for y'all here on I Think We're Alone Now. Thank you so much to everyone who has been subscribing and who has been a subscriber, and if you are listening and you're not yet subscribed, consider subscribing. It's free. So I'm going to work my way down these questions from the Toronto stop on the Crush book tour. Those that don't know what Crush is. Crush is the second graphic novel in a duology we have called Junior High. And Junior High was the first book, and then the second book was called Crush. It's a collaboration with cartoonist and illustrator Tillie Walden. I highly recommend you get some of her work. She's incredible.

We wrote these books during the pandemic. You write graphic novels as a script, and then we sent them to Tillie, and then Tillie draws them and makes a lot of amazing choices and helped us, I think, really elevate these books into a world we didn't ever imagine even entering. So we're really proud of the books you can get both online or at your favorite in indie bookstore. And now I'm going to jump into the questions from our Toronto stop. We did a book event there in October at OCAD. It was really, really special. Loved it. And yeah, we only got to a couple questions, so I'm going to blaze my way through these. Thanks so much for listening. I will also put up a transcript of this audio file. Should you find yourself thinking, I don't want to listen to Tegan talking, understandable. No worries.

All right, the first question was, any plans on continuing the volumes of the graphic novel? So Sara and I and Tillie only agreed to do two books together. We're obviously all very busy, and Tillie is an incredible artist with a very big career of her own, so Junior High and Crush is just a two book series. We won't be continuing it, but we have talked about collaborating again with Tillie, probably on something for the adult space. So, you know, don't hold your breath. It's not going to be anytime soon, but we definitely want to collaborate with Tillie again. She's amazing, so, but I highly recommend all of Tillie's work if you're having a hankering for more of her incredible stories and designs.

As a writer myself, I was wondering what the writing process is like. How do you two split the work? What are some of the difficulties you've had to overcome? This is a great question. So, you know, in music, Sara and I write solely on our own. We write the vast majority of our music from our catalog has been written separately. We collaborate once we get in the studio, and, you know, make suggestions about lyrics or melodies or structure. But like I said, the vast majority of our work is done separately, at solo, and it's kind of how we've always worked. And when we worked on high school, our memoir is kind of similar. You know, once we got into the thick of writing, we created an outline for 10th, 11th and 12th grade, and we peppered that outline with stories that we each wanted to tell, and then we figured out how we would, you know, alternate our stories to tell a cohesive version of our high school experience from both of our perspectives. So, you know, it was a challenge in itself, and we used those skills to figure out how to write Junior High our first graphic novel. So, graphic novels, for those that don't know, you write them as a script. So Sara started the process and wrote a few chapters in script form, and then passed them on to me, and I just kind of picked up the story from there. So unlike with high school, our memoir, we didn't write in our own voice. We wrote in the voice of all the characters, and we didn't have a clear outline. We sort of had a rough idea of what we wanted Junior High to be and we had two really amazing editors who helped guide us through the process to create more conflict, to create more, you know, interesting arcs to the story, but generally how we wrote it was just sending back and forth chapters with a sort of a very choose your own adventure style. I think some of the difficulties to overcome, you know, has been, what if we don't agree to the vision or the change or the shift in the story? What if we don't like a character? What if I delete things Sara's written that she liked? Did I keep her changes or keep the changes, you know, like, there's, there's been, like, some natural hurdles and difficulties we've had to figure out. But we're getting there, you know, we're writing two more books next year, one for the adult space and one for the kids space again, and I do feel like we're going into it with a little more experience, and hopefully we won't have as many hurdles to overcome. But you know, that's partly why we like making art, is the risks and the challenges and the learning and ultimately, the collaboration. That's why we do so much stuff together.

So my five year old daughter and I read your books for her bedtime stories. She's mad I came here without her past her bedtime. I'm wondering if you'd sign books for her. Completely understand if this is impossible. I thought it never hurts to ask. Thank you. Well, it's been like a month, and I'm not able to sign your daughter's books. But I will say this, I think it's so sweet that you're reading our books to your five year old daughter. I think that's really wonderful. I know reading with our mom and dad when we were kids was such a special time for us, and we started reading very young, and it's been such an important part of my life. So I'm big fan of hearing parents who read to their kids before bed. I'm sorry we didn't get to sign the books for your daughter, although I will say, I believe at OCAD, we signed all the books that were for sale there, so maybe if you bought a book there, there it was signed. But I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to sign the books, but I hope your daughter continues to enjoy reading, and we'll see you all at a show sometime.

Hi, my name is Courtney. Are you going to do more acoustic tours? We loved the last one. It was super special, and easily one of my favorite concerts of all time, if you're up to do a whole to a whole album, it'd be so cool. Keep rocking. You know, I, first of all, I loved, loved, loved the tour we just did in Ontario in March, the Not Tonight Tour, where we revisited our third album, if it was you, plus we added a bunch of other songs from our catalog. Loved it. Will absolutely do stuff like that again. You know, when we went out and did The Con 10 and 10th Anniversary Tour, it was the same thing. We played The Con stripped down and then and sort of did a set of Greatest Hits afterwards. Loved it. Yeah, I just, I love those kinds of sort of opportunities to go back and revisit our work. I love playing acoustic. I love storytelling. I love playing in small venues. You know, financially, it wasn't, it won't keep it won't keep the mortgage payments happening regularly, but we love doing it, and we'll definitely do more of it in terms of recording an acoustic album. I love that idea. We've never made an acoustic album. I definitely am thinking a lot about the future of Tegan and Sara and experimenting with putting out songs as opposed to putting out full albums, and definitely thinking about how to experiment with different sounds.I love the idea of making a super pop banger again, but also love the idea of doing a strip down acoustic song again. So, you know, I think, I think you're gonna see probably a lot of experimentation in Tegan and Sara world in the years to come. I think you never know…stand by.

After watching your documentary, Fanatical, my question is, how, after such an experience, who still lingers? Sorry, after watching your documentary, Fanatical, my question is, how, after such an experience, who still lingers, do you decide what stories and content go into your books? Do you ponder on how much to reveal, not just about yourselves, but friends as well? Thank you. The question's a little confusing in terms of how it's worded, but I think I get the gist. So our documentary, Fanatical, directed by the amazing Erin Lee Carr, that just came out is about this terrifying experience we've sort of had off and on over the last decade plus, where someone was pretending to be me online, but also pretending to be friends of mine and our managers. They managed to hack into our managers. I discord. They stored all of our songs and passports and personal information. They broke into multiple managers emails and set up auto forwarding. At one point, they got into the Tegan and Sara email. They were able to, years into it, get into my email, which I had, you know, long abandoned, but still, they were able to trick dozens of people all over the world into thinking they were talking to me or talking to people around me. And the question is, you know, you know, after such an experience, do I to a question, what goes into our books, or how much to reveal, reveal about myself and friends? I think in general, I understand this question to be like, did this, did this situation with fake Tegan and the Fanatical situation, like, did it change how I make art? No, it didn't. It changed how I share that art. It changed who I share that art with. It changed our safety and security protocols around all that. I think it certainly has changed the way the we interact with the internet and social media. It's changed the way we email and do business online, and it certainly made us a little more weary and a little more careful when it comes to fan interactions. I think in general, the internet and social media have also made us think that too, you know, like it's all happening at the same time. So I wouldn't give fake Tegan credit for everything that we've done, like in terms of changes and making ourselves more safe and secure. But you know, in general, I think we, as we've gotten older, have thought a lot more about our safety and what we share. I think we're really good at curating ourselves in a way that you feel like you're getting a lot out of us, and you're getting to know us, and we want that. That's a choice we're making. But I think there's a I think it things get blurry when people think they really know us. And I think, you know, that's something that we're working on, trying to expand on and share Fanatical was our first attempt at that. But you know, you don't know us, you don't know our friends, you don't spend time with us, you haven't hung out with us, you don't know our partners. You know, we share little details that we feel comfortable. Like, Sara's not hiding the fact that she's married and has a kid, but she's chosen not to put his face on the internet because he can't consent to that, and it's, you know, she doesn't want people to obsess over him and have access to how he looks. And so, like, you know, there's a huge part of Sara's life with Sid and her family you guys don't have access to and I think that's for the best. You know, we don't post about our friends. We don't post photos of ourselves hanging out with our friends. We don't post ourselves on holidays. We don't post ourselves with our family. We are very particular about what we'll share in terms of content in our homes. Like, we have real strict boundaries around content and what we share, but we still want to share enough about ourselves that there's depth and nuance to the music so that you can feel like you do know us. And we want to be known. Obviously, we're performers and entertainers, but it's always, always on our minds that there's a lot about our lives that we shouldn't be sharing. And I think as we've gotten older, we understand that there's a lot about our personal lives that we need to be protective of, you know, for the people we love around us. So, you know, again, I don't think that this is fake Tegan inspired. This is just the internet, the world we live in, etc. But, yeah, we're always thinking about it.

Can we anticipate any more film or series adaptations like High School? I think the way it works in the book world is certainly you have an agent that's always looking for opportunities to develop or adapt your work. So I imagine that as we continue to write, we will have opportunities to look at adapting our work. We are attached as executive producers to a comic strip called Destiny New York, which is in development right now. It has not been green lit, so who knows if it'll get made. But you know, we're definitely starting to venture out and work on other projects, and we definitely love the film and TV space. We've been very lucky that the first two things we went out and tried to sell High School and Fanatical -  we did. But I don't …it's not that easy. So, we'll see.

You guys have a lot of tattoos. What tattoo would you have gotten if you could in Junior High? Oh my god, no. Don't get tattooed when you're that young. Don't get tattooed. Maybe now I can't stop, but now it's like, it's just, I'm so messy, it's fine, but, yeah, I think it's good that people can't get. I got my first tattoo at 18, and it was my first cover up. It's was a terrible tattoo. My second tattoo is I'm going to actually get it removed. So I would say, don't get tattooed in Junior High. If I could have gotten tattooed in Junior High, oh God, who knows what I would have gotten, like the Nirvana smiley face, probably.

What song that you made is your favorite to listen to? I love our album, The Con. I think it is the most Tegan and Sara sounding album. We had the most aggressive hand in the way that records sounded. Chris Walla, our producer, or who we co-produced with, look with the three of us worked in tandem with each other. That was such a collaborative experience he was so he followed the blueprint of our demos, and, you know, pushed us to play every instrument we possibly could. Yeah, I just love listening to that record. Love it.

Can we anticipate any more film? Oh, we got that question multiple times. Or maybe that person posted multiple times. Okay, same answers above.

Does a lot of your inspiration come from music? Are there any particular artist, songs, etc, that influence your creativity for Crush? That's a great question. You know, I definitely listen to a lot of music. I'm in a Sharon Van Etten, Waxahatchee, Angie McMahon, like a kind of, like alt country, alternative indie phase right now, a lot of female artists loving stuff that sounds a little raw, a little real. None of that inspired Crush, but those are just like, I'm in that kind of phase musically right now. You know, we wrote Night Fever, sort of loosely based on,like, a Carly Rae Jepsen or a Billie Eilish, like, you know, like these kind of young artists that, like, exploded when they were really young. I liked imagining if a young Tegan and Sara lived in the same city as an artist like that and made friends with them, like, how would they mentor the young Tegan and Sara? We didn't have mentors. We didn't have other artists to sort of reach out to, you know, because we kind of started before social media, so it was impossible to reach out to our idols, and not that they would have responded if we had so, yeah, I think what inspired me was just there's this new age of music where artists can reach out to each other and connect, and we now have communities of artists that we all talk to each other and share information, and it's really wonderful.

Why didn't you play your music at the book tour? Well, if we played music, we would have had to have more crew. So we would have needed a sound person, and potentially, you know, a guitar tech or someone to help with the stage. And the book tour was really small, and so it's a financial decision. If we had had a musical element, we would have had to play bigger venues. The tickets would have had to be more expensive. We just really wanted to go out and talk about the book and try to keep tickets as low as possible. So that's why we didn't add music. We also just need a break from music honestly. You know, that's why we're doing books.

What percentage of Crush would you say is based on real life? You know, we took a lot of the major story lines from Crush like, you know, Tegan and Sara losing the Battle of the Bands contest, and, you know, dealing with their first photo shoots and the pressure of their band starting to take off. And, you know, grappling with, do they want to make this their career, or should it stay just a fun, you know, extracurricular activity, you know, getting to open for night fever, like a big superstar, like, that's all pulled right from our real life experience as musicians when we started our career in high school. You know Sara, the Sara relationship with Roshini, her best friend is sort of loosely based on her first relationship in high school with her best friend. Yeah, I'd say in Crush those are the main things that are pulled real, real from our lives. Our real life, the rest of it is pretty fictionalized, but, you know, we're always peppering in things that really happen to us. We're learning that sort of what writers do.

What's the weirdest thing a fan has ever asked you to sign? I don't really love signing people's bodies because I'm worried they're going to get it tattooed, and I have a terrible signature, and I just, I'm not sure that's a good tattoo, but, gosh, we've signed everything, everything. I think when people get us to sign money, I'm like,  but why?

Do you have plans to work on another autobiographical or semi autobiographical book? If so, what era would you be most compelled to focus on? We have two books we're working on. One will be more in the essay autobiographical adult space, and I don't know. I can't really expand on that right now, but TBD, I personally am very interested in the idea of writing about I love the idea of Sara and I continuing to explore the similarities and in the differences in our adult life. Even though we're sort of living this tandem life of musicians and public figures, we're making really different choices personally. And I love the idea of how to explore talking about that. Like, for example, Sara chose to have a child, but I'm, you know, focused more on, like, my dog and independence and the selfishness of being a solo human who doesn't have to raise a child, you know, like, so how do we weave together our alternative way of looking at life and experiencing life that's super interesting to me. In the adult space, in the kids space, we are writing a book that will be more like auto fiction. It will be loosely based on something that happened to us when we were very young, but it'll be most like it'll be fictionalized. So, yeah, I think, you know, we're going to continue to pull from our real life, but I think we'll probably try to move more into the fiction space. But yeah, I have no idea. I mean, you know, when inspiration strikes, you just kind of follow, follow the path. So that's what we're doing right now.

Do you sometimes find it scary to sing and talk in front of a bunch of people you don't know? Uh, no, I don't I actually find it much more scary to imagine sitting in front of a group of people than I know, and talking or sitting in front of a group of people I know, and playing like home, shows are always way harder for me than playing big festivals in the middle of nowhere. So yeah, I don't really have stage fright, which is great for me.

What advice would you give a nine year old who wants to be a singer and songwriter? What a great question. I think that you should focus on the enjoyment you get out of writing and singing. I think right now you're nine years old, you should be having fun and you should bejust expressing your creativity. Try lots of different genres of music. Yeah, just enjoy it. I would say the most important thing is to enjoy it. Do it when it feels right and it feels good. Have fun doing it. Resist the urge to, you know, make it into a job. You know, start by just just expressing it in a way that feels good.

What is my favorite Chappell Roan song? I mean, Good Luck, Babe, of course, but I love Hot to Go and Pink Pony Club, Red Wine Supernova. I mean, all of it, you know, I love it all. You know, I didn't. I found out about Chappell about a year ago because our assistant, who's really young, Emma, who has been on our Substack before, she told me to go see her. She was playing like a 300 seat venue in Vancouver, and was like, I'm going to see Chappell, you should see her. She's so cool. I was like, yeah, yeah. Who knew?

All right, what was the first song you wrote and what inspired it? The first song Sara wrote was Tegan Didn't Go to School Today. We kind of collaborated on it, and it was written in 10th grade. I didn't go to school for a few days because I was very sick. And Sara asked if she could borrow a pair of shoes of mine, there were these purple skate shoes by a company called Etnies. And as a joke, Sara wrote a song about it, and it's a good song, and I couldn't believe she wrote it.

What did you or why did you choose the colors blue and red for your colors in Junior High and Crush? So that is a Tillie Walden question, and it's a great question. And she says that she just felt like those were our colors. We didn't have a say in it, and I'm glad we didn't. I love the colors she chose for the book, and I love that she was able to creatively just make those choices without interference on our part.

Tegan, worst and best story from eighth grade? Whoosh. Well, look, the worst thing about eighth grade was that we had a tight knit group of girlfriends, and we had a huge falling out with them. I won't get into the details, because they don't really matter, but Sara and I, yeah, we had this falling out, and we ended up sort of being on our own for a lot of that year. And that ended up actually being the worst part of the year, but also kind of the best part of the best part of the year. I think for Sara and I, we also learned a lot about ourselves, and learned a lot about what we wanted out of friendships and who, you know, we wanted to connect with. We reconnected with some girls that we'd sort of disconnected with when we started Junior High, because they were like, not the popular girls, and we sort of got pulled into the popular girl group. And I think that we also learned, you know, who your real friends are. And, you know, yeah, so I think we lost a lot that year, but we also gained a lot of our identity that year. We both started to dress very strangely and get into really alternative music. And I think, you know, we just started to figure out who you were starting to write and perform your own songs.

What do you think your younger selves needed to hear so they could trust their creative process and be kind and patient with themselves? The fear of messing up, looking foolish, not being cool enough that can seem paralyzing at times, and I wonder if you have advice for teens or parents to encourage the expression and flow. You know, I have no idea where the confidence to be musicians came from. You know, we were, we were so shy in some ways, and we were very we were both really grappling with our sexuality and identity when we started playing music. And I think we used music as a mask in a way, like we were able to say things we weren't able to or we were able to sing things we weren't able to say. And I think because it was sort of in the form of poetry and this creative pursuit, you know, not very many people asked what we were writing about. I think that's the amazing beauty of music. And the vehicle of music is that it's supposed to my songs are supposed to be a vehicle for you. You're supposed to listen to what I'm singing about, and you're supposed to identify with it. You're supposed to attach it to your own experience. You shouldn't really be thinking about what I wrote about. You know, there's this whole industry in the music world where you're supposed to understand where the artist is coming from, and my heartbreak and my pain and my suffering, and who I was dating, and like what I like to eat for brunch, and what my house looks like, this whole Me, me, me, self centered culture now around celebrity, it sort of defeats the purpose. Like you shouldn't care about any of those things. You should be attaching my music to you, to your experience, your heartbreak, your relationships, your brunch. And I think as a teenager, we still had that, you know, people weren't really that inquisitive about the actual meanings of the songs. They were more like, how are you doing this? How are you writing songs? And we're attaching the songs to their own experience. Our friends were more interested in just listening to the songs and feeling the songs and relating to the songs. And I think that allowed us to trust our creative process and insert a lot of ourselves into our music from a very early, young age. And I would say, you know, my advice to teens or parents to encourage expression and flow is to, you know, not feel obligated to explain yourself, make art and leave it go unexplained, you know. And you know also, trust the process, trust, the medium, that people, if you make something or write something, that hopefully they're going to feel so inspired and connected to it, they're not going to think about what you're saying. You know, all right.

Is there an album you listen to so much in Junior High that it brings you back to the headspace where when you listen to now? If so, which album? You know, REM was a big, a big influence in Junior High. That band live put out a big album. This band Garbage, put out a big album. You know, Nirvana, Hole, near the end of Junior High started to get into grunge and alternative music, obviously in the riot girl movement. But yeah, I would say, like, when I put on the this band LIVE, like their big album with all the big singles on it, like, I've just been transported, you know? Crash Test Dummies, Garbage, REM, yeah, that music just It transports me to grade eight. Ace of Base, my God, right back into eighth grade!

When you think about the mission of your work, whether through your music or writing, what's the one wish you have for the LGBTQ plus community in terms of taking the shame out of sex and normalizing the coming out experience? You know, look, you know, normalizing is a funny word, because we've always tried to make space for the fact that I believe being LGBTQ+ is normal, but also we are weird, we're different, we're alternative, we're different than the normal, you know, average experience, because the world is is set up for cis, straight people. So as much as we normalize being gay, my experience as a gay person is still always going to be unique and different, because I am a minority. You know, my experience with the world is through the lens of someone who is not seeing themselves all the time. So, you know, I think what I hope by normalizing my experience as a queer person is I just create representation for other LGBTQ people to attach to, and I create more of a story for straight people to understand what it's like to be a queer person. But you know, my hope in being out was just, yeah, that I would take the shame out of being queer person, that I would take the fear out of it. But I don't know that my experiences is like everyone else's. So I also have learned over the course of 20 years that, you know, I have a lot of power, and a lot of I have a platform, and, you know, I am sis, and I can, you know, appear straight, or, sorry, yeah, straight. My brain was like, No, you can't. I can appear straight to straight people, you know, I'm, I think, femme and straight, passing to a lot of people, you know, in certain eras of my adulthood. And so I also acknowledge my privilege, that some of the heartbreak and strife and struggle and discrimination that LGBTQ people face even today I don't experience so, yeah. Anyway, I just feel like our work as artists and people has been to normalize and also carve as wide a path as we can while we're here, you know, to make more room for LGBTQ stories and people and experiences, all right.

With so much in common, sisters, musicians, standing up for what's right, have you ever reached the point of screw it? I'm done. If so, what brought you back? Meaning, do we ever think about quitting Tegan and Sara? Of course. You know, I said this in my answers to the Seattle Crush book tour. But you know, we're in a phase right now where we're acknowledging that we're just putting out way too much. We're doing too much work too, we're working too much. And I think that's a result of us trying to fill time that we used to spend touring, and now we're not touring, and we need to, we need to get that equation and that balance right. We cannot work every single second. We cannot just constantly put out stuff. It's too much. I think we can attach to other projects. We could consider producing other people's albums. We could consider being executive producers in the film and TV world on projects not related to us. You know, there's lots, there's plenty for us to be busy doing, but we don't need to constantly be mining ourselves. So, you know, I wouldn't say we're thinking of quitting Tegan and Sara I just think we're understanding that by mining ourselves constantly, we do put a lot of pressure on us so and I think we come back from the edge when we're thinking about quitting by just reminding ourselves how valuable this experience, being in a band and being ourselves has been, and we'll find value and joy and excitement and pleasure in it. Again, it's just we need to live our lives. You know? We need to diversify. We need to be, I need to be Tegan, not from Tegan and Sara. Sometimes, you know.

How did you choose the color scheme throughout the book? I already answered that. That was a Tillie Walden choice.

Are you guys expecting to put out another album in the near future? I don't know. I do not know. I think we would like to experiment with music. Maybe that's putting out one song, maybe it's putting out an EP like, maybe it's putting out two songs. Maybe it's like putting out an acoustic song and a really big pop song at the same time. I don't really know, you know, we love playing the old catalog, so we can tour whenever we want. You know, we want to take a break right now. We're not going to tour in 2025 so I think we'll come back and do some touring in 2026 and it would be nice to have a song or two out. But do we need another album? I don't know, like people will say, yes. Many people listening will go of course. And I think there will be a time where there's a collection of songs that feel like they need to come out together, and maybe that's the next thing we put out. I just don't know. We might also just maybe Sara's gonna write a song three months from now, and we're gonna be like, holy shit, that's gold. Let's put that out. I don't know. I think we're at a point in our career we need to go forward and just follow the path that's inspiring and not worry about it.

Is there a second season of the TV series High School? No, nope, there's not. You know, we loved the experience of adapting High School. Loved our collaborators, Clea and Laura, loved the cast, loved the experience of making a TV show. It was really cool. Unfortunately, you know, I think in the end, Freevee and Amazon weren't the right partner. I think, you know, they supported the making of the first season. But just, you know, even though it got rave reviews and had perfect rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and people seemed to really love it, they just, it just didn't do what they wanted, um, and unfortunately, kind of died on the vine. They didn't tell us for over a year that they weren't picking it up. So unfortunately, we weren't able to go out and shop it, which sucks. I wish they had just told us the truth and that they weren't going to make a second season. Unfortunately, you know, we had some people attached to the show who really loved the show and wanted to keep fighting for it, and then the writers strike happened, and, you know, the industry shutdown happened. And unfortunately, just a lot of time passed. And unfortunately, yeah, it just we weren't able to get a second season made. There are people who are exploring it, but I just wouldn't hold my breath. We're not. We've sort of moved on. And in a way, I love that. It joins a lot of really amazing one season TV shows like My So-Called Life, which really inspired the show. So yeah, it's heartbreaking on one hand, on the other hand, you know, it was hard. It's hard to mine your life. It's hard to see it on the screen. We are not the writers of the show. There were times where we struggled with how things were depicted. And in some ways, I guess it's a blessing that we can kind of move away from this and just let that first season just sit there. But, uh, yeah, it's a tough one. It was, it was a real process this last year, and I'm sorry that we weren't able to share more when it was happening, but that's the way that this industry works, and no more high school.

Does Tegan have her driver's license yet? Has she been driving lately? Guys, I still don't have my driver's license, but I have been driving every single day. I'm feeling quite confident I'm going to take driver's ed in the new year just to get all the road rules down make sure I'm ready for my test and I am going to get my driver's license, I hope in the first quarter of next year. I had a date held in July, but I got COVID, and I also felt like I was really rushing it, and I realized it was giving me anxiety. And with Crush coming out and Fanatical and touring and just lots of normal stuff happening, I was feeling very stressed out. So it's coming. I promise I'm gonna get my driver's license. I'm going to join adults with driver's licenses, but not till the new year.

Last question, looking back, did you have any core memories in middle school that you can attribute to realizing you were queer? Oh, I think this question came in twice, so I already answered that.

Thank you guys for listening. That's Toronto, that was all the questions from the Crush book tour. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted a question, who came to the Crush book tour, specifically in Toronto. We will get to more Crush questions soon. And if you guys have not checked out Junior High and Crush, go buy the books. You can buy them at Indie bookstores. You can buy them online. Check out Tillie Waldens book work. Her books are all amazing. Thanks to you all for listening. Don't forget to subscribe.

Hi Everyone!

This week I tackle the questions we received at the CRUSH book event in Seattle.

You can listen to me answering your questions, or read the transcript below of my answers (beware it is long and was created via Otterai, so I apologize for any mistakes)!

Check out Tillie Walden's books here, this playlist of 90s music I mentioned in one of my answers here, and pick up a copy of Junior High and Crush here.

More answers for the rest of the CRUSH events to come. 

Thanks!

Tegan

Well, hello, loners. And also to visitors who have yet to subscribe. I feel you. I hate to commit to things too. For those of you who saw us on the CRUSH tour this past October, thank you so much for your support. For those of you who are like what is CRUSH? CRUSH is a graphic novel that we wrote in collaboration with Tillie Walden, an incredible cartoonist and illustrator, we did a duology with called JUNIOR HIGH and CRUSH, sort of loosely based on Sara and I's early experience in music; a lightly fictionalized version of our time in JUNIOR HIGH or middle school, for you Americans. The series is really amazing for all ages, although we've been hearing that sort of the 9- to 12-year-old range age kid really likes it, and adults like it too, because there's lots of adult humor. Anyway, we went out and did the CRUSH tour this past October, and it was so fun. The book events were incredible thanks to anyone who attended. It was just such a joy. Obviously, we love to chat. We got so many questions, and the majority of them, of course, we couldn't get to because we only had time for three to five questions a night. But I had promised on stage that we would answer all the questions, so this is my first crack at that. These are questions that we got when we were in Seattle the first night of our book tour, so I'm gonna blaze through them right now.

The first question was, What's your favorite part of the creative process of making art? You know, I love making things, but I do kind of love thinking about making things. A lot of my ideas don't end up getting made, but I am constantly talking about things that I want to make. I have a note in my phone that's just a podcast idea for every single person I've ever met. I have voice notes in my phone probably now numbering near 100 of just random music ideas that I've never finished. But for me, that's part of the creative process is starting things and not finishing them. I know a lot of people in the creative world will tell you just to push through and finish things, but sometimes I just don't feel like finishing an idea, but it inspires a new idea, which I do finish. So I'd say my favorite part of the process is absolutely thinking about ideas. But I also really do love demoing songs. I like it probably even more than going into the actual studio, because I'm a control freak, and I like to be in control. And also really love writing. I love sitting down and working on stories, and I loved writing our memoir, and I loved writing the scripts for for JUNIOR HIGH and CRUSH. All right.

Rosie asks, What's your favorite thing about writing CRUSH? You know, I loved that Sara and I worked on JUNIOR HIGH and CRUSH together. And unlike our memoir where we wrote in alternating voices, like Sara wrote her chapters from high school and I wrote mine, and it just flipped back and forth with JUNIOR HIGH and CRUSH, we actually wrote the scripts together. So we weren't writing just our own voices. We were writing each other's voices and all the other characters, and we kind of did it like, choose your own adventure. So Sara would write a few chapters and then send it to me, and then I would respond. We didn't really write with an outline, which I know is a a bad thing to do if you're a professional writer, but you know, similar to music, we kind of just follow our instincts, and that's, how we did it. But I loved that. I loved getting Sara's chapters and being surprised about what she had done with the characters and what direction she'd taken the story. It was, it was just really fun while writing the book.

Did any emotions about middle school get dug up that you've suppressed over the years or memories that you've forgotten about, that the other reminded you of? You know, I think very much writing JUNIOR HIGH and CRUSH, similar to writing High School, it definitely brought up some memories that I had forgotten. It's really wonderful having an identical twin who can compliment your story and fill it in with detail you didn't have. Obviously, Sara and I, we've said this a lot publicly, but we kept journals and lots of photos, and are still friends with a lot of our friends from that time period. So we were also really lucky in writing both our high school memoir and our JUNIOR HIGH and CRUSH graphic novels, to have a lot of friends to pull from and a lot of sources to get details from. But yeah, it did. It did bring up a lot of feelings. One of the things I talked about on the book tour was that, you know, JUNIOR HIGH was a tough time. You know, you go into puberty. Girls in that sort of 12, 13, 14, range, I feel in particular, are kind of tough and mean. And, you know, I would not say that we are guiltless in that. I think we were, we were tough to you know, I think JUNIOR HIGH was a tough transition period for for both of us, and we went long periods without any friends, you know, we had a lot of conflict, and I look back with a softer, more compassionate lens now at the other girls that we went to school with. But it was, it was a tough crew. It was a tough school. School, we went to school really close to a mall that had a bad reputation, and we had a lot of freedom, and, yeah, did lots of bad things. And remembering that for high school was easier, because I think we'd grown out of some of our worst traits and tendencies. But JUNIOR HIGH. Yeah, that was, it was just, it was a tough period.

So, all right, there was a question, who's your favorite new kid on the block? Mine is Jordan Knight, and Sara's was Joey McIntyre.

What are the pros of novel writing versus music? You know, I think for Sara and I, we ventured into writing books because we wanted to still be creative, but not have to necessarily go out on tour for two years at a time. You know, we've been doing this for a couple decades now, and I love being a musician, but I love being at home. I have a dog, you know, I have a wife, I have a house on an island where I get to garden and putter and work on projects. And Sara's got a two year old son, and also has a wife and a life, and I think we've started to think about, how can we be creatives but not have to leave for hundreds of days at a time? It's sort of the dark side of being a musician that nobody really wants to hear about, and it's hard to understand if you're not a musician. But yeah, like, imagine what it feels like to go away for a week, or, you know, even a couple weeks away from your home or your dog or your partner or your friends. Now imagine that's 200 days. So it can be really lonely, it can be tough, and as we've gotten older, we're definitely strategizing how to be creative without having to do that as much. So I'd say one of the big pros of writing books is getting to be home.

You guys just had a birthday. My daughter wants to know what you got for your birthdays. Great question. I have an electric bike, and my partner bought me a new bell and a basket and a really cool bag that kind of snaps into the basket so I can get groceries. I don't drive, so I'm always looking for ways to avoid having to get my driver's license. I don't know what Sara got for her birthday, but she got me passes to the Christmas market in Vancouver. I get a season pass every year, and I go pretty much like twice a week for the whole month of December. But I don't know what Sara got. It's good question.

What advice would we give to aspiring creatives who want to publish their work but are disillusioned by the industry and what it takes to be a full time artist? You know, it's a great question. I mean, I always start by telling musicians I you know, I wouldn't dare give advice to aspiring writers, because I know so little about the writing industry and TV and film and books world, other than what we've experienced. And I'm understood. I understand that we're very lucky to have had even the career we've had in publishing, just because, you know, we're Tegan and Sara, so we were able to get a book deal. So I have no idea what it entails or takes to write a book if you're not in a band that can sell books, but I can say that just being creative and being a musician, that the number one piece of advice I give to aspiring creatives is to love what you do. If you do not love it wholly and totally with your entire self and soul, you might not never make it into a career, because it does take up all the space it does take up my whole life. You know, I've spent two decades focusing almost solely on my career. It's not for the faint of heart. It's a lot of mining yourself and a lot of selling yourself. You have to be good at marketing. You have to be good at social media. You have to be good at creating content. You have to be comfortable with going away for long periods of time. You have to be comfortable with people prying into your social life and your personal life. It's it's hard, it's long hours, it's late nights, and these days, since people don't really pay for music, it doesn't pay that well, so you have to get creative about how you're going to make a living. So, you know, my advice would be to love it holy and totally, because if you love it holy and totally, you can put aside some of the shock and awe at hearing all of these other things. But I also think that being a creative is just being creative. You don't need to make it into a career, and this was something we talked a lot about on the CRUSH book tour. You do not need to monetize and capitalize your special hobbies and interests and talents. You can just make things because you want to make things. Don't forget that.

Can you each answer what fuels your passion for writing books? Well, I'm only me, so I can answer for me, but I would say that I love to tell stories and I love to talk. And you know, when Sara and I were young, starting when we were about seven or eight years old, we had a computer at home. We used to fight over it to write stories. So we started writing really young. The only class we did well in as we got older was English. So we both really love to read and love to write. So to me, you know, what fuels my passion for writing books is just, you know, that was my first passion before music, and I love to tell stories, and I love to share my inner thoughts, even if it's just with myself. So I just love that. Now we get to do that as part of our job.

This next question is very funny. How do you feel about people naming their pets after you? My wife named our dog Tegan. I'm not sure how you feel about it. No one has said Tegan peed on the floor. Again, more than me, that's very funny. I love it when people name their pets after us. I love it when I meet people whose kids are named after us. I think it's very sweet. It's been pointed out many, many times over the last couple decades. But there's a TV show called Doctor Who, and doctor who had a couple assistants, and one of them was named Tegan, and one was named Sara. My parents did not name us after the assistance on Doctor Who, but I do think it's very funny that some people come up that are my age and are like, Oh my God, my name's Tegan, but it's because I was named after one of the assistants on Doctor Who but I love it. Name your pets after us, name your babies after us. I'm all for it. I think it's hilarious that you have to say Tegan peed on the floor. And that's very funny.

Do I have a favorite song of yours? I think that So Jealous and The Con will always be albums that have a really special place in my life, my heart, my body, my mind, my catalog, just because they're both records where we were kind of anti establishment. We were going against what normal people were doing in the studio, what other artists were making at the time. I think it's when we like really carved out space for ourselves as artists, and we took a lot of chances and a lot of risks, and those songs in particular, I think, were when we started to really find our stride as writers. So I look back quite fondly on both albums. There are really on neither albums. Are there songs that I don't like, like I love absolutely every moment of both those records.

All right, I lost my place. Oh yeah. What did you have for breakfast? Well, it's very early where I am, so all I've had so far is a decaf Americano, and I'm now drinking a ginger peach tea. I kind of start the morning with a lot of fluids.

What advice do you have for a writer in a rut? You know, I listened to this podcast recently that talked a lot about how if you start your day with creativity, as opposed to getting through emails and texts and checklists, that it tends to be well, it tends to generate more creativity. So I would say, if you are in a rut, maybe wake up really early, make a cup of ginger peach tea, and write anything. And do that before you check email or look at the news or start working your way down your text messages or your checklist, see if you can carve out a bit of time with a fresh mind to be creative. See how that goes.

What are the pros of novel writing versus music? I think I sort of answered that, but I would say, you know, we still love making music. I do think that, yeah, I don't even know if there are pros of novels versus writing music, like in terms of creative process. For me, they're both very similar. I do both solo. I do them mostly on a computer. And, you know, it's all about experimentation and taking risks. I think both really generate a lot of happiness in me.

What advice do you have for non binary lesbian, exploring identities? Oh, man, well, I mean, I'm not non binary, so I would hate to mislead you by suggesting I know exactly what your experience is like. I think how you see the world, or your experience in the world may be a little different than me, because I do identify as cis, but as a lesbian, I will say that, you know, I experimented with sexuality a lot over the course of my lifetime. You know, I dated guys in high school and into my early 20s. I have dated a lot of different kinds of women. I'm also, I am, like, kind of like a serial relationship person and a monogamous so, you know, I didn't do crazy, wild experimentation, and I have no idea how I would identify or who I would be if I were born now versus in the 80s. You know, I've talked a lot, actually, with queer friends of mine, especially queer women. You know that, like, I have a few friends who are quite masc, and you know, they don't identify as trans or non binary, but they admit that maybe, if they were younger, maybe they would like, I think a lot of us have just gotten like, I know for myself, speaking solely for myself, I'm very comfortable in my body. I don't really have any dysphoria, so I've, you know, not had to really struggle with that part of my identity. I don't feel like I I've always felt very comfortable identifying as queer or as lesbian and not bisexual, because as much as I think men are attractive and I didn't have a horrible time dating men, I just the feeling I have for women, the desire, the connection, the emotional compatibility, and just like the physical connection I have with women, it just it, it pushed me over the edge to like I am queer, I am gay, I'm lesbian. So but I think that this sort of period in time where people are experimenting more with identity and are moving more on the. Spectrum is really inspiring. And I say, go for it. You have your whole life to explore. There's absolutely no reason not to do it.

Who inspired you to write books? I'd say it's less of who, and more just what. You know, Sara and my parents. Well, my mom specifically was such a big reader, and my grandma was a big reader, and Sara and I were really encouraged to read as young people. So, you know, starting from a very, very young age, I just loved reading. And I'd say when the opportunity to write a book came up, it was really exciting to sort of explore that world, and I'm still exploring it and enjoying it. Yeah, I just love to read. Honestly, it would be hard for me to even pin down a top 10 list of favorite authors. I just I just love books. I just love to read. So that's what inspires me.

Um, what's your favorite song? Not of yours. Well, you know, I love Bruce Springsteen. I have such an attachment to his music because we grew up listening to it. I love 90s alternative music. I put on 90s playlists all the time. I've definitely figured out that there's just something about 90s music. Obviously, it's because I was a teenager. But, you know, it's also pre digital recording, so everything feels really alive and real. You know, I don't even think we know or notice as much as we probably should, how like music now, everything is on the grid, everything is perfect, everything is smoothed out and just sounds good. And when you listen to 90s music, it's kind of fun. I really encourage you to go put a 90s playlist on maybe I'll put one in this sub stack. But it just it moves. There's a bit more freedom and movement within the vocals, within the instruments. It just has more energy. It feels more raw. I feel like emotionally can take you on more of a roller coaster, because it's not perfect. So I definitely am thinking a lot about how to make our music feel more like that as we move forward into the next chapter of our band. We'll see if we are able to do that.

What do you guys identify as today? I identify as queer, cis woman. I like the word queer because I feel it sort of encompasses culture, sexuality and my gender. You know, I don't feel super feminine, but I also don't feel masculine, so I feel like it sort of queerness is just sort of this sort of, it's like a sliding scale or something. Yeah, that's how I identify.

What musical artists growing up do you wish would have made a graphic novel? Oh, that's such an interesting question. I mean, my God, we were so obsessed with the riot girl movement in the 90s. I probably, if I'd even been able to get my hands on some of the zines that came out of the Pacific Northwest, I would have been over the moon. You know, we had a lot of comics in our house because my stepdad loved comics, but we didn't really have graphic novels. I think, honestly, these days, I actually have been meaning to I'm gonna do a post about graphic novels, and some of the ones that I've read recently that I love, there's just so much incredible, incredible storytelling and art and, yeah, just like, amazing moving stuff coming out of the graphic novel space. So I'm gonna do a post about it. But any of the books like would've moved me as a young person.

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What's been your favorite hairstyle that you've had? I love the Love You to Death era. It's like kind of shaved underneath, though you don't never see it, but it's undercut and kind of straight, like I was straightening my hair during that era. I like that. It's kind of floppy, kind of Jared Leto circa My So Called Life era. I'm kind of going for that again.

What's your favorite part of CRUSH? I loved creating the character Night Fever. We had ambitions of writing a bunch of songs under the name Night Fever and putting it out as kind of a joke. I ended up writing a bunch of music, but we just are so I just am so overwhelmed with how much stuff we've made in the last couple years, and I just felt too exhausted to see it through and commit fully. And I'm very, very focused on always seeing our art through and fully committing. So maybe down the road, we'll write some music as night fever. But yeah, that was such a… it was so cool to move into the fictional space, write new characters based on just our imagination. And I just loved I love writing a mentor for young Tegan and Sara, because we didn't really have one.

Thoughts on the chair you're currently sitting in? I'm not in a chair. I'm in bed!

Between friends, what's the last book you stopped reading before finishing? What an interesting question. That would probably make it for an interesting Substack post on TRQ reads. There are books I stop reading. Um, off the top my head, I can't think of the last one, but maybe I'll write about that. Maybe, maybe I'll write about a couple books I wasn't able to finish. And you all can encourage me to keep reading. Maybe you have an opinion.

Um, have you guys almost broken up the band? If so, How'd it happen?
Oh, my God, you kidding me? We almost break up constantly. I wouldn't say we ever use the words we're breaking up the band and it's over. That's only happened twice or three times that I can remember. You know, we do have moments where we're just like, I've had enough and I need a break. You know, I'd say we're in one of those moments right now where we just are both really tired. We've been putting out all our output has been pretty I think because we're not touring as much, we think we have to create more stuff. I haven't said that out loud, actually, this is kind of revelatory, I think because we're not touring, you know, we used to put a record out and go on tour for two years straight, and then we'd, you know, take six months off and then start working on a new record. And, you know, by time we got into the studio and started to look at putting new music out. I mean, it had been four years. And I think because we're not touring as much, we just have been putting out so much. I mean, since 2019 we've put out high school, our memoir. We made Hey Im Just Like You, an album of songs from the 90s. We made a TV show based on high school. We re recorded So Jealous, acoustic recording each other's songs. We made another album called Crybaby. We put out two graphic novels JUNIOR HIGH and CRUSH. What else did we do? Oh, we made Fanatical this documentary. We did it retrospective on Audible. I mean, it's mental, yeah, so I don't think we're thinking about breaking up our band. We're just like, we need to stop we need to take proper breaks. We need to wait for inspiration, you know, so, yeah, but we have absolutely gotten into massive fights. The Con, we had a huge fight halfway through, and canceled a bunch of touring and definitely talked about stopping, you know, the start of Heartthrob was very hard. We had a lot of personal stuff going on, and that really flooded our band and how we dealt with each other. You know, we have moments for sure.

What advice do I have for a 13 year old going through middle school? Keep your head up. I know it's hard. We all go through it. It's a tough time. Keep perspective. Lean on your parents. Your parents are cooler than you think. Your parents have good advice. Remember your parents went through middle school, lean on your parents and also just like, be yourself. I'll say that the most valuable lessons I learned and the happier times of middle school when was when Sara and I just ventured out on our own and did our own thing and dressed weird and listened to weird music and just were like, fuck everything. You know?

Do you have advice for making friends in JUNIOR HIGH? You know, I gave this advice the other day, but oftentimes special interests or hobbies, the things you're listening to or into, that's how you meet other people, is by sharing that you like those things. You know, if you've got a favorite band, wear that t-shirt to school. If you are really interested in pottery or horseback riding or baseball, you know, join a team, press forward, meet other people who like to do the same, same things that you like to do. Also, I mean, as an adult, the advice that they give is show curiosity. You know, the more curious you are about people, the more they feel seen and cared for, and they often will then, you know, want to know more about you, so ask questions.

What has been the hardest years of your life? JUNIOR HIGH was pretty tough. I'd say that seventh parts of seventh and eighth grade were really brutal. You know, I got out of a relationship when I was 26 and there was a tough period. That's when I started writing The Con. That was a tough part of my life. You know, the Heartthrob era was really brutal. We worked way too much, and a lot of personal stuff was happening that was hard. Yeah, you know, it's a cycle. It's a cycle. There's sometimes just bad days, not bad years. But you know, no one's life is perfect. You know?

Do you like to play video games and beat each other? No, we don't play video games, but we did when we were younger, we used to play Mario Kart.

How did we meet Tillie Walden? Our publisher of the graphic novel and our editors made a list, and Tillie was on that list, and we just fell in love with her work, and we met over email. We didn't actually physically meet her for years, crazy. We met on the JUNIOR HIGH book tour, but we love her. We're obsessed with her.

Did you know you'd stay queer when you were in JUNIOR HIGH? You know, I didn't know I was gay. I still liked boys, which is confusing to articulate. But you know, the social pressure of being popular or having a boyfriend like that was still really relevant to me all through JUNIOR HIGH and high school. So I had boyfriends, and I did like them. I did not like them as much as I liked my girlfriends, and I didn't know what that meant. That was sort of that was confusing to me. And then once I had my first relationship with a girl and hooked up with a girl, I was like, okay, like, this is starting to make sense, like I like girls more than I like boys. And I think once I started to figure that out, I was like, I think at that time, I don't think I ever uttered the word bisexual, but I think that I started to be like, okay, maybe I like girls and boys. And then once I was like, out in the world dating women, I was like, I am gay. I am very gay. But I want to say that I don't think you have to stay anything. I think that life is about experimentation, and you should follow what is happening for you inside. I think for me, when it comes to gender and sexuality, that is an inside feeling, and if you feel something, explore that you know.

Are you ever nervous for shows? Not really. No, I don't really get nervous before I go on stage. It's very rare. Um, that could be a bad thing, because it might mean I don't, I don't know. I'm not sure what that means.

All right, what role do you think nostalgia plays in your music and in the CRUSH project? We are obsessed with nostalgia. I think we look back a lot. I think we reflect a lot. I think reprocessing my life is integral to my creative process. I think looking at experiences, love, loss, lust, desire, heartbreak, rejection, falling in love, all of that, it's like I constantly go back and reflect, and then through that lens, I reflect on how I feel now. And it's like that combination, that collaboration of the past and current feelings that creates art for me.

Um, this isn't much of a question. I have a dog named Tillie… that's so sweet.

Do either of you have stage fright? No.  

I was wondering if you guys were really that chill when you were in JUNIOR HIGH. Also, if you have any, I mean, any suggestions for getting through sixth grade? We were not chill in JUNIOR HIGH. We are not chill people. We are very, very excitable, intense, cerebral, extroverted, excitable, complicated, chaotic human beings, very multi layered, and we were like that in JUNIOR HIGH. I think Sara was a little more introverted and a little more internalized. But we were not chill. No, we had so much drama. We f

ought with our friends constantly. We fought with each other, we fought with my mom. We went from being excellent students to really suffering and having difficult times academically. We dropped out of a lot of our extracurriculars. No, we were fucking chaotic. And any advice? I mean, look, I liked sixth grade, but I know JUNIOR HIGH or middle school starts earlier. For Americans, it's hard. You are going through so much. You are changing. Your brain is changing. Your body is changing your friends bodies and minds are changing. The world is chaos. Now you've got the internet and cell phones and social media. I said this a little bit earlier. Lean on your parents. Remember that they went through that, that they are your they are your lifeline. They are your North Star. Don't put up with shit from your friends. Have integrity. Believe in yourself, you know, be curious. Ask questions. Care about adults. Adults are really great for helping you get through tough times. That would be my advice.

Looking back, did you have any core memories in middle school that you can attribute to realizing you were queer? Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, I can go all the way back to elementary school and be like I was obsessed with my girlfriends, obsessed. Yeah, I always had, I was always obsessed with my mom's friends. I always had a real attachment to women that went beyond, I think, what other girls that were not queer were feeling. I yeah, I definitely feel in in middle school and JUNIOR HIGH, specifically, girls in our age group were really obsessed with boys in a way that I didn't relate to, I didn't understand. I did want guys to like me. I wanted to have a cool boyfriend. I wanted, you know, I had some of the natural social peer pressure desires that everyone had. But I can look back and go, Yeah, I was really, really, really, really, really attached my girlfriends and starting to think about, you know, starting to desire things that were different than I had felt for boys, you know. So, yeah, I can definitely, and I started to see queer things like, you know, through my adolescence, I started to see movies or television characters like on My So-Called Life, or this movie Chasing Amy, or When Night is Falling, or, you know, this book Fall on Your Knees by Anne Marie McDonald. Like I started to find queer representation in television, film and books, and that started to like it was like an awakening where I was like, Oh, wait, I feel that way too. So, yeah, it starts young.

CRUSH starts with Tegan and Sara having a shared dream. Have you ever had the same dream in real life? That's funny. What a good question. I don't think Sara and I are telepathic or have shared dreams, but we do, oddly make weird choices that are random and outside of character at the same time. You know, sometimes it means like we'll both show up wearing the exact same outfit that's very different than what we normally wear, or we'll both really feel a calling or a pull towards an artist or a movie or a book at the same time without each other knowing. And then we'll talk about it and be like, Oh my God, but no, we don't share dreams.

My first show that I saw you at was at the Delta Airlines show at the East Theater in Los Angeles. Can you talk about how the experience is doing a show for a different type of audience or a different type of venue than normal? That's a really interesting question. I remember that show, so this is, this is a great question. So oftentimes, artists you know will end up getting asked to do shows that are partnership shows or brand shows. Sometimes it's for radio. Sometimes it's like this. It's like Delta Airlines, you know, offers their, you know, premium customers, a special experience, or whatever. This kind of shit only really happens when you're very popular. And that was a moment where we were very popular, so but um, that's who I remember as being kind of funny. Certainly like to work for an audience. For sure, we definitely like supporting and opening for other bands and pushing ourselves to do something new and challenging. You know, sometimes they can go really great. Sometimes they suck. One time we played literally like a bazillionaire, like his daughter was getting married or something, and they had a dinner and a party, and they had us come play three songs. And it was during the Heartthrob era, same as the Delta Airlines show, I think, or right after that, where you have to take these shows because you're opening for other bands, you're doing radio shows, you're not making as much money because you're having to do a lot of promotional stuff. So you take these kind of corporate gigs because they help pay the bills. And I remember it being tough, you know, it's a crowd of people that don't care about your band, they care about one song, and that's hard, but I think for Sara and I, we say yes to them, partly because it's financial, but also it's a challenge, you know, and sometimes I just, I'm like, I'm gonna make these people like us.

What's your favorite city to visit and why? You know, I love traveling internationally. When it comes to like, new cities, I love traveling internationally. It's exciting to wake up in a different country every day in Europe, it's exciting to go to Asia. It's exciting to go to Australia. It's exciting to be in new places and get to explore. We don't get to do a lot of exploring in North America, and it's not as exciting, I have to admit. So, yeah, I can't pick a favorite city, but I can just say that's one of the perks of traveling internationally, is waking up somewhere new every day.

Um, what's something that's exciting you artistically right now? You know, we have a couple books that we have sold, so we need to start writing, and I'm excited about that. I'm excited to move into a more fictional space, or auto fiction space. Yeah, I'm excited artistically and creatively right now to keep writing for young people as well. I am intrigued to see what we do musically, like I said earlier, I feel like we want to be thoughtful about what we put out next musically. So I'm not sure what that's going to be, but yeah, the wheels are starting to turn, the pots are starting to boil.

What's your favorite song that you've written or sang? I kind of answered that already. I love stuff off of So Jealous and The Con.

What's your favorite place to eat in Seattle, or favorite coffee shop? I cannot answer that. I do not go there enough to have a favorite. Why don't you tell me what your favorite coffee shop or restaurant is in Seattle in the comments for next time I go there.

Do you ever play the game, Code Names? I've never played it. Tell me more in the comments.

Will there be a third book? There is not going to be a third book in the JUNIOR HIGH CRUSH duology. That's it. But we did talk with Tillie Walden about collaborating again, maybe on something for adults, and she seemed really excited at the prospect of that. So yeah, I think we'll definitely collaborate with Tillie again. I love the idea of maybe, you know, working in the graphic novel space again, but I'm excited to move into chapter books and move away from graphic novels for a minute. And, you know, just excited to keep experimenting with writing.

Are you two huggers? What a great question. I've never had this question before, kind of, I mean, I can't speak for Sara. I can only speak for myself and say that I am my love languages is physical touch, and I love touch from people I know. I have to admit, I struggle with being hugged or touched by strangers. That's a product of probably decades of being touched by strangers. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I am not like repelled by it. I'm not mad at people who want to hug or want to shake hands when they meet us, I promise. But it's hard to hug and touch like 100 people in a row. There's a physical experience there that I think a lot of people don't recognize or haven't had and don't realize. Like, it's a lot, it can physically be a lot. It's a lot to meet 150 or whatever, strangers at a book signing, and every one of them want to touch you. There's a germ part of it, there's a stranger danger part of it. There's an inappropriate touch part of it, but I think some of it is just, you know, just, it's a lot physically to like touch that many people. So, yeah, I am definitely like to hug my friends.

How can you find a CRUSH if you're looking for one? What a great question. I have been so lucky in my sort of dating life to sort of naturally meet people out and about. I've never had to use a dating app. I don't even know how I would go about doing that. You know, I've said this a couple times about making friends in this, in this. Now it feels like I'm doing a one man show, a podcast, but um, I think be curious. Curiosity is such a powerful tool. Asking someone questions, listening to the answers to the question, and then following up with more questions. It makes people feel really seen. So I feel like and I think it what it does is, if it's the right person for you, it inspires them to ask you questions and be curious about you. So I feel like whether it's making friends or finding a CRUSH or getting into a new relationship, or even, you know, in your workplace, you know, having connections, ask questions and then ask follow up questions and then see, are they interested in you, or is it a reciprocal thing? You know, I'd say that's where I would start.

I want to learn guitar. Do you have any tips for learning? I mean, we're self-taught. I will watch tutorials sometimes about how to play certain chords. I mean, I've been playing guitar since I was 15, and I still do not know how to tell the key of the song, and I'm bad with anything based than basic chord names for basic chords. I so I might be the worst person, honestly. But I think like these days, between like YouTube and Tech Talk and guitar tab, apps and stuff, it's gotten a lot easier. So, I'd say just pick one of those avenues and jump in.

This is the last question, what's your favorite place to eat in Seattle, favorite coffee shop? So we got it twice. We'll end there. If you're from Seattle, you tell me in the comments, what's your favorite place to eat and your favorite coffee shop. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll get to the next cities in a bit, but this was Seattle. Thanks for listening. If you haven't picked up JUNIOR HIGH and CRUSH, you can get it online or you can get it from your favorite local bookstore. Don't forget to check out Tillie Walden’s other books, and we'll talk to you all soon. Thanks for subscribing to I think we're alone now. Bye.

Hello Loners,

To mark today’s momentous election in the United States of America, I made a chilled out playlist to soothe my mind. Perhaps you too are looking for such a playlist?

Sara

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Loners!

I saw Sara’s post about the books she has read from the NYT Best Books of the 21st Century. It inspired me to go through the list and mark which ones I want to read, rather than marking the ones I have already read (I think I had read about 42 of them) to share with you!

Note: there were PLENTY of books I think that should have been on that list …

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Hi Loners,

You’re hearing it FIRST! We’re going on a book tour to celebrate the upcoming release of our newest graphic novel, CRUSH (out October 1st)! We will officially announce tomorrow but are so excited we wanted to share this news with you, our loyal Loners Club members, first! There will be special moderators in each city and Tillie Walden will be …

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Hi Loners -

On the Not Tonight Tour, we’ll be taking questions from you, our beloved Loners.

Ask us anything about the tour and otherwise in the comments below, and we’ll answer your questions while on the road in a video once a week! 

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The other day, Sara referenced an article she had read and enjoyed immensely in The Atlantic about a woman who didn’t like dogs and was uncomfortable admitting it in public. I think Sara thought I might be annoyed or offended by the article or her enjoyment of it, but I read it, and honestly, it’s pretty funny, and some of what Olga Khazan says in it is actually true, not to mention deeply relatable. But coming from a cat person, which Sara is, I was a little skeptical. I too had been a cat person most of my life.

My experience with dogs prior to getting one was almost non-existent. Growing up, we had cats, lizards, newts, guinea pigs, hamsters, and gerbils. But never a dog.

Our best friend in junior high had a boxer, which might have been the most time I ever spent with a dog in childhood. I had no affection for the dog, and she had none for me. She was not fixed and often was in a diaper, on her period, and this repulsed me. My high school boyfriend had a dog, but I remember almost nothing about the furry pet. Twice in adulthood, I’ve dated someone with a dog, and twice I’ve thought to myself, nah, while doing so. It seemed to be so much work. And there was just so much poop, not to mention the early mornings, the vet bills, the constant correcting of the dog, and the "I have to get home to my dog" thing.  None of it seemed appealing.

When I met Sofia eight years ago, she claimed to be into both dogs and cats, so I just thought, We’ll get a cat, or two when the time is right. By then, I’d met lots of sweet dogs, little and big, well-trained and not, but I still had no desire to have one of my own. Too much responsibility for someone like me; a person who travels most of the year. Plus, I was a city person, a lock-and-leave-the-apartment-for-months-at-a-time person. Untethered and unleashed, I couldn’t imagine settling down and tying myself to a needy animal.

In my opinion, dogs were for farms or sniffing out drugs; they should be trained to move and protect livestock, I thought. They should have jobs and purpose. They should not live in a fancy bag under some ladies’ arm or in cramped apartments in the city, and they certainly shouldn’t go to brunch with their owners. I have always found incessant barking as annoying as the jagged roar of motorcycles or muscle cars in the city, and pet hair of any kind on furniture or, God forbid, someone’s bed, made me feel gaggy and unclean. More than once, I have admitted that if someone I liked let their dog sleep in bed with them I’d break up with them (what a monster I was).

But then one day, eight years ago, something changed.

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Hi all,

As I’ve become more comfortable driving and I’ve been updating my playlist for car rides. Top drives this summer: Ikea, Spanish Banks, a dental cleaning, and a spontaneous late night movie, solo. This morning I took Sid down to the English Bay, with his push cart, and some snacks. On the way home, he started to drift off, and I had to turn off my…

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Hi all,

I love it when a song immediately reminds me of something else. Not in a blatant rip off kind of way, but something sneakier and flashing. A tiny detail in the bass, or a vocal melody that twists sharply away from the familiar. I can’t always recall the source material tugging away at my sleeve, but when I do, there is always a reward for solving…

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Hi!

As promised I cut and paste all the questions from our virtual Junior High book event and answered them below. Thank you to everyone who joined us on the book tour - be it in person or virtually - we had such a great time. It means so much to us that people took time out to come and support the book, and we hope you’ll keep spreading the word abou…

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Hi!

This week we’re trying something new! We left each other voice notes answering two questions we got from Substack Notes about our new graphic novel Junior High, which is out May 30th! So you can listen to the post! Or below is a rough transcript of the audio!

We are going to answer more of your questions about Junior High in written form, video form, and voice note form in the coming weeks! If you have questions about the graphic novel, about our process, about stories that didn’t make the cut, or just want to share your experience of Junior High, leave all that in the comments!

T&S

PS: We just announced TWO new Junior High shirts that are available for pre-order in our online store (USA / CAN) to celebrate the release of Junior High! One features us dressing like we did in Junior High – no wait, it was us on Halloween – and the other features Tillie Walden’s incredible illustration from the book. For that one, 50% of the proceeds from the shirt will go directly to the Tegan and Sara Foundation.

Pre Order Now!

TEGAN: Things have been pretty busy over here in Tegan and Sara world getting ready for the Crybaby tour and getting ready to put out Junior High, our graphic novel, which is out May 30th, so I had this idea to post on Substack notes and ask people for questions about junior high. So many of you sent so many great questions. So Sara and I are going to tackle them over the next four or five weeks. But I decided to send Sara some via voice note, and just have her respond that way. She's been super, super busy. And I know some of you are really busy, too. So here are just a couple of questions that we got from Substack Notes. Thank you, again, to everyone who submitted the questions. And let us know in the comments if you like this format if you like listening to voice notes, or something a little shorter. Okay, bye.

TEGAN: Hey, so I'm just pulling down these questions from the Substack post on Notes. And here's one for you that I thought you might, like it's related to the black eye on High School, where I give you a black eye, and this person was wondering if we ever actually really gave each other a black eye. I don't think we did. Right? Like we never actually hit each other in the face.

SARA: The answer to that question, which you kind of answered yourself, which I'm not sure if you understand how Question and Answer works, but in any case, no, we did not ever give each other black eyes. And there were times when we fought each other. But I think we generally stayed away from punching each other in the face. That seemed pretty gruesome. Although in the case of the movie poster that we made for Get Along, I had thought there was no reason to be subtle. Hence, the black eye.

TEGAN: Another person shared that their middle school experience was the most awkward time of their youth. And they had this really stressful memory of a mean girl locker room situation where a boy pushed them into a locker and said, “Are you a boy or girl” because they had short hair. They were a girl. Anyway, the question for us was, “Do we have any traumatizing locker room stories? And or did we have bullies in junior high? And how did we handle it?”

SARA: Junior High was definitely a nightmare. And no we didn't necessarily have bullies in the traditional sense, getting pushed into lockers or called names or that sort of thing there was a kind of psychological warfare that was pretty prevalent among the girls in the school. And we got caught up in that both as friends of those girls, and then kind of as enemies of those girls later on. It's weird, because now when I look back on it, you know, I have a subjectivity that maybe we were also part of the kind of toxic-ness of that time, in our own ways. Like we ended up ditching a lot of our former friends who were sweet and nice, and perhaps not part of the cool clique, but were genuine friends. And then we kind of ghosted them socially, which is its own kind of bullying, I suppose. But the more acute trauma we have or that we share from that time involved girls who, you know, were one day your best friend and the next day, were saying terrible things about you or ignoring you or turning other people against you. And it was completely inexplicable to me, I was just not tuned in to that kind of conflict. I just never was really possessive or jealous or competitive with girls in that way. So everything that was kind of required of us socially to be popular, I think we abandoned that by the midpoint of grade eight, we just kind of let go of the idea that we could make any sense of that social hierarchy. And then we thankfully made new friends in grade nine. It was untenable to continue being friends with that group of girls on those terms. And then by the time we made new friends, it was kind of like, we became a different kind of popular and then everybody from our former group of friends wanted to still be friends with us, but it was a lot more civilized moving forward.

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Hi!

This week, I thought I would share a list of things I’ve listened to this year. I typically listen to podcasts or audiobooks while I clean, organize, do laundry, walk the dog, or when I’m traveling – specifically in cars between the airport and hotel, etc. This year I’ve already been to Mexico and Palm Springs, and this past month we did a trip to T…

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