Sara,
I’ve lost count of how many musicians have told me over the years that they can’t change their sound for fear of losing fans. I’ve heard different reasons why, but the primary one seems to be the theory that fans attach themselves to the genre or scene a band belongs to, and so once they achieve any level of success, they are stuck in said scene/genre. Even if they evolve, or want to evolve, they can’t. One lead singer of a band told me he felt like he couldn't even dress differently, for fear he’d alienate the band’s fanbase. He’d been trapped in skinny jeans for twenty years desperately hoping for the day when he would be allowed to wear boot-cut jeans. This seemed insane to me. It still does.
But I agree some bands live in a world where the production they choose, and the way they dress, are decided by the audience that listens to them. The way a board might vote to update and improve a condominium, fans have a massive stake in what a band can and cannot do. I imagine for some bands this makes life easy. Other bands probably don’t mind because they want to stay the same or be told what to do. I kind of envy those people. But I have never thought of us this way. You and I are forever changing. The only people with a vote are us.
No doubt many people in our audience would like to dictate the terms of our existence. But they’ve learned, or they will, that we do what we want. We dress how we like and change our style when it suits us. We write songs and allow those songs to dictate the direction we go in with every new album. We actively try new sounds, new styles, and new scenes all the time. We push each other to evolve and grow between albums. We try to never walk the same path twice. We believe our job is to create something new, something the audience isn’t expecting, something we haven’t already given them. Like we did when we made the poppy Heartthrob after indie-rock records like The Con and Sainthood. And it seems to work — for the most part.
These changes are a calculated risk, yes. We know we’ll lose fans by changing between albums, but we also know we’ll gain others in their place. Of course, we’d prefer to keep everyone, but that’s not always possible. People get older, some see less live music, or listen to less music at home. Some have kids, get into cross-fit, discover different genres of music, and grow away from what they used to like, as they find new things to love. It’s normal. I think the key to preventing dissension in an audience when you change is to focus on what will make you happy and inspired because the audience can see it, hear that, feel it. We can’t possibly be successful if we are making something we don’t believe in.
Early on in the cycle, a journalist asked flat out why we weren’t satisfied with what we had. As if at 33 years old we were no longer allowed to dream, or want more for our lives, ourselves, and our band. We were ambitious. I felt like people wanted us to apologize for being ambitious, but we didn’t.
Looking back, you and I never apologize for evolving or changing. Some of our career highlights have been when we stepped out of our comfort zone with Tiesto for Feel It In My Bones, or Everything Is Awesome for the Lego Movie. We’re always honest and open about why we do it; everything must stand apart from what we’ve done before; everything should reflect who we are now, inspire who we want to be in the future, and not rely too heavily on who we once were.
Relegating ourselves to the underground, into the margins, was only amplifying the message that people like us didn't belong in the mainstream; that we didn’t deserve that kind of success; that people wouldn’t relate to us, our story, our music. And so, if you were like us, or liked us, then you didn’t belong either. We hated that.
When we released Heartthrob in 2013 we expressed a desire with the public to be a bigger band, reach more people, and play bigger venues. Early on in the cycle, a journalist asked flat out why we weren’t satisfied with what we had. As if at 33 years old we were no longer allowed to dream, or want more for our lives, ourselves, and our band. We were ambitious. I felt like people wanted us to apologize for being ambitious, but we didn’t. We stuck to our talking points. We pushed forward, confidently. We thought we needed a slicker, more pop-friendly album to reach a bigger audience, so we made a slicker more pop-friendly album. The songs were still ours, the message was too. It was still us. It will always be us. The reality is you and I both know that a lot of people thought we would alienate our fanbase with Heartthrob. We disagreed. But if we did lose people, and I know we did, we saw it as a worthwhile risk to take. I still do.
Relegating ourselves to the underground, into the margins, was only amplifying the message that people like us didn't belong in the mainstream; that we didn’t deserve that kind of success; that people wouldn’t relate to us, our story, our music. And so, if you were like us, or liked us, then you didn’t belong either. We hated that. Our desire was to reach more people, to queer the mainstream, and to see more artists like ourselves on radio, on tv, and in the press. And it was about saying there were more people like us, and we deserved to be visible in all those places. Though clumsy at times, we projected that as we promoted Heartthrob, and I could feel the opinion of us and that album changing in the inner circles of our fanbase as we did. You were less concerned. You said to blame our new sound on you. But I wanted it too. I needed change just as much as you.
When we released So Jealous in 2004 people were also worried that we’d sow dissension among our fans by adding keyboards to our sound. It makes me laugh now, to think that by adding an instrument to our album we would somehow lose fans. On that record cycle, we explained that we were piano players before we were guitar players. We’d been Royal Conservatory trained, we told anyone who would listen as if we needed an excuse or proof to play a new instrument. All of this seems ridiculous now. Things have changed so much since then. I believe it is our job to explore and that means everything about us, including our music, is going to evolve. That’s ultimately the advice I give these artists worried about changing, or anxious about losing their fans. They’ll lose fans anyway if they aren’t inspired. All of us, not just creatives, must be willing to take risks in life and maybe lose people along the way. But we have to change, evolve, and grow. We must. To save ourselves from destruction. Or worse. Boredom.
I was thinking about all this because I know we are taking a chance with this new album coming later this year —like always. It feels like a left turn, and for some, it will feel like an unexpected change. Maybe an uncomfortable one. Some people might not get it. But when I hear it, I hear exactly who we are right now. I still hear all the parts of our story, familiar in every way. We’ve changed, but no matter what we do we can’t escape who we are. We have preserved what makes us unique, protected the parts that people love, and uncovered new things, revealing other layers of ourselves. And I think you can hear that in the music. People over the years have worried we’d fuck up what we’d accomplished by taking risks. But looking back, it’s the moments when you and I fucked up what we thought mattered, and started again, that we found the joy, the inspiration, and the drive that kept us moving forward. And forward is where we must always go.
Tegan
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