Tegan and Sara Say 'You Can Be Pop And You Can Be Real And Good' ::Tegan and Sara News ::antiMusic.com

Tegan and Sara Say 'You Can Be Pop And You Can Be Real And Good'

08/22/2013
. (Radio.com) When Tegan and Sara released their first album, Under Feet Like Ours, in 1999, pop was Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. Fourteen years later and the twins Quin have broadened their sound, so much so that their seventh album Heartthrob meets 21st century pop at its frontier. But Tegan and Sara is a different, some would say smarter, kind of pop music. "I feel like now you can be pop and you can be real and good," Tegan recently told Radio.com.

The change in tides became clear when the duo released Heartthrob back in February, which debuted at No. 3 selling 49,000 copies in its opening week, according to Billboard. It sold almost two times more than their previous album, 2009′s Sainthood, which debuted all the way at No. 21.

Of course, the chart success is nice, but it hasn't fazed the duo too much. It hasn't even convinced them that pop is what they want to be doing for the rest of their career.

"Who knows what will be happening in two years," Tegan said. "If we'll still be on this course or doing something weird and avant-garde again."

Along with their recent success, the duo talked about touring with their pals in fun., the importance of having artistic freedom and being Macklemore's "two little gay friends."

Radio.com: You're currently on tour with fun. What's it like touring with them?

Tegan: They're horrible. It's a terrible mistake for us. [Laughs]

Sara: We love fun., they're the nicest guys. It does help that we're friends. If you don't know each other or you've never spent time with each other, there's that kind of awkward getting to know each other sort of like summer camp kind of nervousness or something and I didn't go into this tour feeling that way at all. That's really nice. They have a wonderful energy around their band. The audience is really open. We're really enjoying our sets every night supporting them and we feel like both musically and politically that there's a really good parallel between our bands.

Radio.com: You have referred to both your music and fun.'s as "intelligent pop." How would you define this new genre?

Tegan: I think that in the '80s there was lots of throwaway pop music, but there was a lot of really intelligent pop music. A lot of political bands that were popular. U2 was one of them. Obviously the definition of pop has changed back and forth and back and forth and we ping-pong. When we first put out our first record, pop was Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears and now, that's still pop but you can also be pop and be Rihanna, or be fun. or be Tegan and Sara so I just think it's been a super interesting year, a couple of years actually, on radio. Read the rest of the interview here.

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