"This insatiable thing in us": Tegan and Sara reflect on their drive and making music in their 40s

Tegan and Sara Quin have built their career on a foundation of vulnerability, between their music and things like their memoir, “High School.” In the new Audible Original “Under My Control,” the twin sisters get even more personal about their life and music, delving into the pivotal moments that have shaped them through deep conversations with journalist Laura Snapes.

“Under My Control,” which is the latest volume in Audible’s “Words + Music” series, also features eight new recordings of songs from the band’s catalog, including “Where Does the Good Go,” “Walking with a Ghost” and “Back in Your Head.” 

On a recent afternoon, Tegan and Sara hopped on Zoom to discuss “Under My Control.”

What stories were most important for you to tell in “Under My Control”?

Tegan Quin: We spent quite a bit of prep time with [journalist] Laura Snapes talking through the beats we wanted to hit. We had a pretty good idea of what music we were going to rework and record, so obviously we use those as tentpoles. 

But we've done a lot of retrospectives. There was a book that came out that looks at our entire career, but more through a critical music lens and talks more about our place in the industry. [And we had] “High School,” the memoir, we covered that. 

Leading into this project, we tried to fill in the gaps. We still wanted to tell the story of our career for this project and not miss anything, especially [because we were] hoping that new people will listen and people who haven't necessarily indulged in all these other projects. But we definitely wanted to cover new ground. 

I think because we had the luxury of time and so many hours and hours and hours and hours over multiple days with Laura, we were able to cover stuff that we wouldn't in a traditional interview setting.

It did end up feeling very conversational and, for us, we wanted it to feel like a really heartfelt look at our career. Weaving together with the music, we wanted it to feel like you could really walk away with a deep understanding of what the last 25 years looked like for us.

Sara Quin: It was really important for us to work with somebody on this project who also was really familiar with our band [and] wasn't a completely new person, but who also had some objective distance from us. She's written both positively and critically about our band over the years. I would say I think she's more a fan than not a fan. But it was really important to us that we work with someone who could push us and who we would feel comfortable being pushed by to talk about these things, hopefully with more texture than we have before publicly.

Between doing this Audible Original and then “High School,” what have been the most surprising or gratifying things that you've discovered — or uncovered — about yourself?

Tegan Quin: Well, I can say for myself, I just feel like we’ve always…we joke about it, but it's not untrue. But we're unwell. We're just constantly going and going and going. We're like, “Another tour, another tour, longer, a book now, this thing, that thing. Another record.” We just went so hard for so long that when in 2018 we stopped everything and started writing the book, it was possibly the first time we'd sat with our career up to that point. Which technically in 2018 was 20 years since we'd graduated high school. 

It was the first time we'd been reflective on the beginning part of our career, on coming out — in a more expansive way than just spending 10 minutes talking to a journalist about our coming out experience or something. Just sit for a year and write hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages about why we started playing music and who we are and our relationship as siblings and what it was like to come out and what it was like to start our career.

That was truly the first time we'd done that. That work meant we did a lot of work internally in our relationship, in our band, in our work relationships. It really got the ball going the last couple of years to be more reflective on all areas of our career, on all areas of our life. 

I won't go so far as to say that working on the memoir inspired us to move back to Canada and [inspired things like] Sara [having] a baby and [us begging] to be released from our major label contract. 

But it did light the flame of: Can we take control back? Can we have control over our life? Can we stop this? This insatiable thing in us, but also this thing around us that's constantly, “Go, go, go, go, go. Come on, come on, come on, come on! More, more, more! Post, post, post! You can do it. You can do it. Let's try to sell it out.” 

When I say that my cortisol levels and my adrenal glands are f**ked, I really mean it. It was constant. I just believe we hit a point in our career a few years ago where we were like, can we get control of this? Can we stop all of this? Can we produce music and be creative? And keep working, but in a way that allows us to have a different kind of life. 

I think these projects — starting with “High School and then [the graphic novel] “Junior High” and now “Under My Control,” but also the TV show — even just the press we choose to do, the podcasts we appear on, the way we write on social media — it has all been a concerted effort to try and voice what it's like to be in our band. What it's been like to be in our band for the last 25 years.

To say the things that were really scary to say. To casually mention in press: Yes, it was very troubling and hard to be in our band at first because the misogyny and sexism and homophobia that was in our press was laughed about and just written off. “Oh, don't worry about it” and “Who cares?” and “Just keep going.” There was so much that we never processed properly, so to take this time through these projects to tell our story has been so rewarding and fulfilling.

But even more so, which I did not think about, was how rewarding and fulfilling it is for other people who come to us. Musicians, other queer people who've come to us and been like, "Oh my God, thank you for saying what happened to you. Thank you for telling your story. Thanks for sharing your experience. I relate to it." You're like, oh my God. Then that becomes very addictive too, where you're like, “Let's do it more! Let's tell more stories!”

But I think this project specifically with “Under My Control,” this is super important to us to put in our own words what we are, who we are, why we are, and to timestamp that, this is a very important time in our life. 

We've technically entered the second part of our life. We are in the second half. We're middle-aged. It's wild. I think to tell our story now as opposed to waiting until we retire, I think it's important. We're going to process it again and we're going to see it differently probably in a decade or two. But right now with this perspective — COVID, taking time off the road, leaving a major label, Sara having a kid, moving back to Canada, making a concerted effort to slow down. This felt like the right time to zoom out and tell the story.

Tegan & Sara "Under My Control" (Courtesy of Audible)

There's so much risk as a musician, especially now, to say, “I need to slow down and go out of the spotlight.” Because you're like, are people going to forget me? There's that pressure. It's such a hard balance, but then you're like, “Wait, I have to take care of myself so in 20 years I can still be there.” I feel like that's a microcosm of what so many people have to realize when they hit their 40s.

Tegan Quin: You are resistant. I want to resist it of course. I want to be like, “No, no, no, no, we're not being cliché.” For me it happened a year or two ago where I was like, “Let's lean into legacy.” I don't want to be 25. The most miserable parts of our career were where we were most popular. We didn't like it. I didn't like being on TV. I don't like going to radio stations. I don't want to play arenas. Why can't we be honest? Why can't we look at each other, first and foremost, then our team and then the world and be honest about why we are the artists that we are?

Again, can we get control of that narrative? Because the narrative for a long time was like, pop. It was us saying, “Why can't we be in the pop mainstream? We're queer and there's no one there. Why can't we? We want bigger. We want better. How come we can't want more? Women aren't allowed to want more. We want more.” We did that for so long and then all of a sudden I was like, "Excuse me, excuse me, sorry, sorry, sorry. We want less. Is there any way we could have less? Can we do less? Can we back up? Can we stop?" That's hard. But it is cliché in a way. But it's a rite of passage to get to this part of life and say, “I want different things.”

How have you found that reaching this point has influenced the songs you're writing and the way you're approaching writing going forward?

Sara Quin: I've always had periods of time where I don't write very much. I am not currently writing very much music or at all. I make little instrumentals where I put things down, but I haven't sat down to write songs in a long time, which is not new. Throughout my life, I've had periods like this. But I've never before felt so cognizant of . . . I don't know if I have anything to write about right now. Before when I wouldn't be able to write, I would say, “Oh, it was because I was busy” or “I was depressed” or “I didn't have time.”

I have lots of time. I probably could sit down and write music. I admit the compulsion to do it has changed. That could be age. That could be because our creative flow is directed in so many other directions right now. It's hard for me to creatively really sit down and write music. Because I'm doing stuff like this or I'm working on other projects or I'm working on a TV thing. I'm doing all this other stuff.

I find that music is the most precious and most intimate of the art forms that we dabble in. I just don't have enough intimate dabbling time, so I just haven't been working on anything. In the past, when you're young, I don't know, it's like the crazy stuff's always happening. You're getting broken up with, you fall in love, you feel everything at a 10 all the time.

There's just this part of me that's like — it's not that I don't feel enough or that I don't have this desire to put my emotion somewhere. But I think this is healthy, but I think I've just found other ways and other places to put my energy. Whereas before, the outlet I needed or the only outlet I had on some level, was music. Now I'm like, I don't know, I can put it somewhere else. It's hard. I can see how as you get older your output slows because there's a different editing process. I don't know — but we'll see.

Tegan Quin: I was going to add to something you said a second ago. But you said it's like music is the most vulnerable of the creative paths that we take — and it's true. I wonder if some of this too, is us still adjusting to a world where music has been cheapened down to, like, it’s worthless. We stream music. Like, it's nothing. It's not a product anymore. Most people don't pay for it. There's just so much music coming at us.

And I don't mean to sound like an old person here, I don't mean it in that way. I love the technology. I love streaming. I love the way it's opened up music. It's made it so that many things can be popular at the same time. It's actually been a gift to us. 

But I just wonder. We used to put everything into making music. Everything. The story and the artwork and the merchandise, the commitment to our fanbase, two-and-a-half-years a cycle touring around the world. We only know that way of making music.

I feel like we're on the high diving board right now. The top board, looking down trying to decide what to jump into next. I think when it comes to music, we're going to have to learn a new way. I don't think that old school way is worth it anymore. I think we did it a little bit with our latest project “Crybaby.” It is an album. It's a coherent album from start to finish. It's made in the way that we want. We produced it, we took control, we left a major label, we own it. We made the music videos. We went out and toured it.

People seemed to really like it, but it's different. It feels different. I wonder if some of our not writing music, it's not so much a block as it is . . . It’s an end. That kind of making of albums in that world, it's over.

“Under My Control” feels like an end to those chapters of our career. I'm very excited. We're going to turn around and look forward any day now and the next thing of the future will come. But when it comes to music, I agree with what you're saying Sara, around it is the most vulnerable and intimate thing we do. And right now, music, it feels like the opposite of that. 

I think we have to figure out how to navigate that. We can't put everything we are into something and then put it out and it's like, “It's over.” Literally the week our album came out, our managers showed up backstage and said, "The record company want to know if you guys want to go in the studio and work on some new music." It was literally like three days after the album came out. I'm not mad at that.

Sara Quin: To be fair. To be fair, the campaigns are so different now.

Tegan Quin: That's the thing is—that I'm not mad at it. It's a whole new way. The whole campaign leading up is the promotion of the album and then the album's out and it's over. It's fine. Like I said, I'm not mad at it. This process of recording “Under My Control” I was like, “Wow, we really have done a lot.” We made 10 albums. That's not including live albums and single releases and collaborations and remixes and co-writes. We've made a lot of music, and it's all been really special.

I think whatever we do next, it has to be really meaningful and it can't be the same approach that we've applied in the past, because it won't work. And that's exciting. 

That, for the first time in a long time, has got me feeling really excited. I feel musically how we do it, what we do, all of it — it'll be really different. It's got to be. This feels very similar to times in our career where we have literally burned everything down to the ground and started again. I feel that's very much what we have to do now.

That's very exciting because you're taking the time to be deliberate about it. You're not just jumping off the high dive just to see, I don't know what's down there. You're being really careful about that. 

Tegan Quin: It's not a panicky state that we're in. We're in a very like, “Wow, this is awesome. We've got a lot.” What do we do next? We're thinking a lot about it.

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Of the eight new recordings you did, do either of you have a favorite of the ones you redid? When you recorded them, how did you want to approach the songs?

Sara Quin: Well, we didn't overthink it. We wanted to be, I guess more . . . not improvising, but we just were like, “What if we just go in using [a] very simple template?” Like try a little bit of acoustic, try a little bit of keyboard. We wouldn't go overboard thinking about anything. We just would strip it back to the basics. We worked with John Congleton and Luke Reynolds who actually had worked with us on “Crybaby,” so we were really familiar with them.

The song that I was most happy to redo was “My Number.” I think because it's certainly the oldest song . . . and it's weird, it's like muscle memory. It's as if Tegan wrote it yesterday. But then also we haven't played it with any consistency for 20-something years. It was very familiar to go back to, and yet it just felt like, I don't know, it was the easiest. It's just such a beautiful song. I think now to be in our 40s, I think objectively, I can say, what a fantastic song to have written at such a young age.

Tegan wrote that when we were barely out of high school. It’s like, what a spectacular song. As a result of recording it for this project, we played it all summer and fall, we played it live. It just kills every night. We can hold the attention of 800 people or in some cases 10,000 people. It's just a testament to the strength of the lyric and the song. It's definitely, for me, the standout of the piece.

Tegan Quin: Yeah, I'd say that going that far back into our catalog was really exciting and fun. It's nice to remember, “Oh yeah, songs can just be good songs.” I was also really excited to record “Under My Control.” That was my favorite song from “Crybaby.” I liked the idea of including something new. I thought the recording of it was really beautiful, and we kept it really simple. 

I think we've been in a tug of war with ourselves and our audience for many, many, many years over production. Because fans will just tell you, "We just want to hear you guys. We just want it to be acoustic." And you're like, “No, I want to go in the studio and experiment and make wildly different kinds of records.” It's why you can look at “So Jealous” and “Heartthrob” and they're different bands almost. But that's how we keep our fans interested, I think. 

But I do think there's something to be said — Sara and I have this ability to strip it right down and it's us and our voices and the words we say. It is captivating, and it's nice to be reminded of that from time to time. We're still going to probably mess around with lots of different kinds of production. But I think the recording of “Under My Control,” the song, reminded me that first and foremost, Sara and I are storytellers, and our songs are the vehicle to do that. [It’s] important to remember that when we're submitting music for new records.

Listen to the Audible Original "Under My Control" for free now.