Tegan and Sara on their new album and crafting the queer canon they always wanted in High School

Most of us would rather endure another timed mile for gym class than relive our high school experience. But not Tegan and Sara.

The twin-sister rock duo has literally made it their business to look back, writing their 2019 memoir, High School, and now helming its TV adaptation, which premiered Oct. 14 on Amazon Freevee to positive reviews (ours included). But given that they ascended to indie stardom when they were just 18 after winning a local Garage Warz competition — which helped launch a long and illustrious career with record sales in the millions — it's easy to see why their formative years merit a double take.

But High School, starring first-time actresses Railey and Seazynn Gilliland, isn't about their aspirational rise to fame, at least not strictly. Rather, creator Clea DuVall's vision of Tegan and Sara Quin's origin stories is, at its core, a portrait of fringe siblings navigating adolescence and queerness in 1990s Calgary — with a killer soundtrack, of course (we're treated to Hole, 7 Year Bitch, Veruca Salt, and Bruce Springsteen in the first five minutes alone).

Though their love for music is omnipresent and we eventually see their first steps towards the spotlight, the series' beating heart is its representation, both queer and otherwise. Even their father saw himself in the honest portrayal of school-age bulls---, specifically a scene in the pilot in which a bully maims Tegan's long hair with a glob of gum. He confided in his daughter later that he experienced the same thing decades before. "This moment was like, 'Even my dad can connect to the show and to the misery of being a young person,'" Tegan tells EW.

You'd think signing on as executive producers for a television project would claim most of their energy, but no. COVID 19–born introspection in isolation got the better of them, especially Sara, who began toying with the sampling app Keezy, penning bedroom electro-pop demos and sending the files to Tegan, who was immediately ecstatic and inspired. And just like that, they were writing their 10th studio album, on top of everything else.

Fresh off the growing pains of a new creative team and a new label (swapping titan Warner Bros. for indie label Mom+Pop Music), Crybaby isn't a far cry from the teenage anguish they've spent the past few years rehashing — the title directly invokes compulsive immaturity and emotional outbursts without a lick of shame. In a word, it's unabashed, and with a new sonic lightness and lyrical rigor, the twins come out swinging.

Tegan and Sara, now 42, sat down with EW over Zoom to discuss the catharsis of writing Crybaby, watching their coming-of-age materialize on screen, and building the queer canon they always wanted to see.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So many of the songs on Crybaby seem to have a teen angst aura to them, like "F*****g Up What Matters" and "Can't Grow Up." How does it compare to what you felt over 20 years ago?

SARA QUIN: I mean, when we were teenagers and young adults, we were trying to be more chill so that people would be like, "Wow, these are very mature, sophisticated musicians for their age." And now that we're 42, we're kind of like, "F--- it." [Laughs] Especially coming from rock and punk rock, when men would be angsty and intense, I felt like they were given credit, like, "Oh, they're really emotional" or "They're intent" or whatever. And when girls would be emotionally intent, it was like, "Oh, they're so immature" or "They're freaking out." Tegan and I learned that in order to be taken seriously in a really sexist industry, we had to have our emotions under control. You don't wanna be the woman that everybody's like, "Oh God, she's having a meltdown."

I think as adult women, our lives are in control, but it's fun to get on stage and sing at the top of your lungs. And it's fun to be hyperbolic and be emotional. And I hope we're in a place now where we can just get on stage and not worry about whether we're being taken seriously or not.

Your last music venture was remastering some demos from your teens years and then came your memoir, the show High School, and a graphic novel about you in junior high. What do you find so inspirational and interesting about adolescence even now?

TEGAN QUIN: I know most people are like, "I never wanna think about high school ever again." And I totally get that. I think for us, that is our job in a way. When I'm working on music, of course I'm writing about how I feel right now, but I am reprocessing old relationships or old experiences, and I'm reflecting on how I feel now. There's a lot of value in going back [to] early childhood or my teenage years — what happened, what we experienced, even just being queer and closeted.

It's also an opportunity to continue to do the work we like to do as a band, which is to offer people a place to connect and to hopefully feel seen. We were othered so much in our career at the beginning, and a lot of our audience, I think, also feel that way. Our shows became a safe space for people to come and see other people like them. I just hope we're creating new spaces for people to say, "Geez, I really relate to that" or "Oh, that happened to me."

What was it like to see your coming-of-age related to queerness on screen? What did that conjure for you guys?

SARA QUIN: Actually, I thought Tegan answered that [last question] really well… that would actually be my response [to this question]. Because we didn't have any TV shows or movies or artists to look up to, or to see the kinds of experiences we were having as queer adolescents. I don't know any shows about queer twins. And to be able to see ourselves as young budding artists? It was very surreal.

This isn't a criticism of the art that has been created in the queer space about teenage adolescence, but one of the things that was always really missing for me in those stories was the feeling that there was more than one person who was available to date. Every queer show has, like, one almost gay person who the gay person can date. And I didn't feel that represented our experience growing up. There was a chemistry we had with our social circle that didn't necessarily always feel romantic, but there was this affection and love and intensity we all had with each other. And I think High School really captured that.

Yeah, for sure. There are so many moments of your characters encountering new friends and meeting people for the first time. They seem to have an intimate charge, and it's not strictly sexual.

SARA QUIN: Yeah, and that felt important and brave, because I think one of the things we're battling as queer people [is spending] a lot of time trying to reassure straight people that we're not sex-crazed and gonna turn every girl gay. This is a real thing. When you're a teenager and you're queer [there's] this idea of if people find out I'm gay, they're gonna be uncomfortable with me or they're gonna not want me to touch them or look at them because I might be thinking sexual thoughts about them. It's just not true. It's not creepy. I was a girl who looked at other girls. I was attracted to lots of girls. I still am. And I love that Clea was able to give space for that in a way that I think is representative of a lot of queer experiences.

Another thing I loved about the show is the music, of course. How much of a hand did you guys have in picking the songs that were featured?

TEGAN QUIN: As [executive producers], we were heavily involved in the decision-making around it. We wanted to show the spectrum that rave music and Babes in Toyland [were] big. It wasn't just Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Green Day and Hole, but we also f---ing wanted all those bands in there, too.

The first pass was pretty intense because it was practically the same amount of money to make the show as it was to get the music we wanted. So we had to start lobbying these iconic empires and asking them to consider reducing fees to allow us to have this music. The angle was that we see men making music and finding their artistry, and our memoir felt so powerful because you see these women figuring out how to be creative and how to write songs. We were listening to the radio — those were the bedrocks of our musical growth, how we learned to love music. It was necessary to really showcase how Tegan and Sara became Tegan and Sara.

Crybaby fits into this niche for music where the lyrics are very frustrated or wallowing, but it sounds so upbeat. What led you to that intersection and this new bedroom electro-pop sound?

TEGAN QUIN: One of the most powerful tools you can use in pop music is to juxtapose deep introspective ideas and beautiful words with frenetic, excited music. We're pushing back on this idea that you hit a certain age as women in the industry and you need to stop being fun and upbeat and high-energy. F--- that. A lot of artists in their 30s and 40s are still making really amazing music and pushing the envelope. Sarah and I wanted a record that felt lively and youthful because we are lively and youthful. When I'm screaming "F*****g Up What Matters" and "I Can't Grow Up" at the top of my lungs, [it's because] this is how we feel. We feel f---ing frustrated and alive and introspective, but we also feel strong and powerful.

We spent the last five years asking ourselves, "Did we get what we want out of our career? Are there still things to be done? Are there still things we wanna say?" It's like two people who come bursting out of a room who have been biting it out and figuring it out. That's what the record sounds like to me.

Crybaby is out now. New episodes of High School stream Fridays on Amazon Freevee.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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