Crybaby
Our tenth studio album Crybaby is out now! You can stream it, buy it digitally, or go to a record store and pick up a physical copy today! We are so proud of this album and hope that you’ll listen to the whole thing (a hundred times).
We co-produced the album with the delighted, talented, and hilarious John Congleton. These songs capture the tumultuous times of the pandemic, the professional trials and tribulations we went through, and the personal challenges of raising a puppy, and the pursuit of becoming a parent. We went to the edge and we made it back. While signed a new record deal with Mom and Pop, an indie label with an amazing roster of alternative artists and have never been happier. We’re so proud, and excited to see this new album finally make its way to your ears in full.
Releasing new songs has been so satisfying and we thank you for listening to the music, watching the videos and reading about our process here on Substack these last few months. Thank you for engaging with us on social media and in the comments of our posts. Your investment in our band continues to inspire all that we do! We cannot wait to tour and play these new songs live and hope to see all of you on the road soon.
Below, we tell you a bit about each song on Crybaby as well as share some of the album artwork. Emy Storey once again brought the heat and this is some of her best work (in our humble opinion!)
XO Tegan and Sara
I Can’t Grow Up
Sara: There will always be parts of me that vibrate on the same bratty, insecure wavelength as the teenager blasting music on my stereo and singing my guts out in the dark.
Tegan: This is the song that inspired us to make a new album. It’s a real thrasher and made me want to be in a band again. For me the biggest goal with Crybaby was to make something that inspired me to be back on stage. This song did that.
All I Wanted
Sara: Sometimes not getting what you want, is its own kind of freedom.
Tegan: I used to go running and listen to this one again and again. Another track Sara sent really early on to me in the process of making the new album. It was still the part of the pandemic where people would wear masks outside even if there was no one around. I was glad to wear a mask because when I listened to All I Wanted I would smile wildly imagining playing it live. This one is a tearjerker that makes you want to sway.
Fucking Up What Matters
Tegan: This started as an alt-country song - like most of my contributions to Crybaby. I couldn’t be happier with where it ended up, but it will forever be a sad song about my mistakes - the ones in my past and the ones to come.
Sara: Tegan poached the lyrics for the bridge from a discarded song I wrote in 2015 called, Everything’s Changed I Miss the 90’s. Somehow it felt prophetic, in the midst of a pandemic, to sing:
I feel like nothing is ever the same
I feel like something’s about to change
Everything stopped we hit the ceiling
I feel like nothing is ever the same
I feel like something’s about to change
Everything stopped I lost the feeling
Yellow
Sara: I’ve talked plenty about this one, but what feels new to me now that we are performing it live, is how satisfying the bridge is to sing when it finally arrives. A true release.
Tegan: I admit this one took me a few listens. I loved the lyrics. But something was missing. Now I think it’s in my top three best songs Sara has ever written. A classic in every way. I do believe that “this bruise ain’t black it’s yellow” it a truly genius lyric.
Smoking Weed Alone
Tegan: This song evolved so much from where it started. And it became a true collaboration between Sara and me. Like Closer, it took half a dozen chorus ideas to land the monster we eventually did. I hope people lose their shit to this one live. That’s my daydream.
Sara: I always believed this song should be sung as a duet, and approached like a debate. The audience is witness to an age old argument, that every duo, and every couple, has had a thousand times.
Faded Like A Feeling
Tegan: I knew a few people going through breakups and admit I soaked up their heartbreak to write this one. I am often the one causing heartbreak. And having spent dozens of hours listening to friends talk about their heartbreak, I had the desire to write a response. Sometimes you hurt people but don’t mean to. Sometimes you have to hurt someone to save yourself.
Sara: John asked us to write another song for the album in the days before we flew to LA for our final recording session. Something like a ballad, is what I remember him suggesting. Tegan churned this out, as she has with most of my favourite Tegan songs, overnight.
I’m Okay
Sara:
If we’re starting over can I summon resolve?
Find a new symptom, not a problem to solve?
I need inspiration, time to evolve
When I’m feeling listless, time to dissolve
I feel myself going soft, I feel my head turning off
Save us!
Tegan: This song is such a fucking banger. If people don’t lose their shit to this one I’m quitting. This song is a roller coaster ride in a pop dream where you dropped acid and it’s a fucking fun ride.
Pretty Shitty Time
Tegan: This was a soft acoustic alt-country tearjerker. Sara basically responded to my recording of the song with a “NO.” She sent back a version that sounds very much like the recorded album version you are hearing. It was clear Sara had a vision. And I was very much there for it. In the original song I don’t sing Pretty Shitty Time. I sang Pacific Standard Time. You can find me, on the west coast, pacific standard time. Sara emailed something along the lines of, NO!!! And changed it to Pretty Shitty Time. We love this song. In the studio we would rock the fuck out to this. I hope people get it.
Sara: I wrote Emy, about this song, and she suggested replacing pacific standard time, with Pretty Shitty Time. That unlocked the song for me. Instead of a country ballad, it became a “red solo cups up” kind of song. Or, something that the kids who hated high school but went to grad/promo would play at the end of the night.
Under My Control
Sara: During our final recording session for Crybaby, I learned that Stacy was pregnant. I wrote these lyrics and then skipped out early from the studio to have crybaby tattooed on my wrist.
I used cry, like a baby
Tears slipping down, till you saved me
I used to cry, used to cry
You would tell me just decide, just decide
Like the feeling when I cry baby
I used to be a crybaby
Tegan: This song is a fucking classic. It’s top ten for me of Sara’s songs. I saved it from being cut off our master song list. It’s just so good. I think this is the sleeper hit of the album.
This Ain’t Going Well
Tegan: This was another song inspired by a conversation with a friend going through a breakup. I think in the immediate aftermath of loss we get stuck thinking about all the ways we could have done better, but also all the things we missed out on with that person. We cling to the small promises, the big plans we made but never followed through on. In Call It Off I said something similar when I suggested, Maybe I would have been something you’d be good at.
Sara: I can’t love somebody who doesn’t love the worst parts of me
Sometimes I See Stars
Sara: I love this song, but in retrospect I wouldn’t put it on the album. It was written before the pandemic, and I think it just feels like it’s from the before. That bridge, though, damn.
Tegan: This was one of the first new songs Sara played me maybe three years ago. I loved it. This is a deep cut for sure, and it’s late in the record so some people will miss it, but it deserves a dozen listens. So go listen a dozen times. Then tell me it isn’t buried so deep into your brain that it won’t ever get out. I’ll wait.
Whatever That Was
Tegan: Sara claims this is her favorite of mine from the album. I don’t know if I believe that entirely. But I think it’s a great closer. I’m working on saying less. Using fewer words. There’s a whole story in the space. Listen for it.
Sara: It’s true.
Crybaby