Tegan and Sara Have Returned to Their Roots in the Most Interesting Way Possible (Album Review: 'Hey, I'm Just Like You')

I would like to believe that even people who say they enjoyed high school would most probably not want to relive it. Insecurities come alive, friendships come and go, and most importantly, nobody knows who they are yet. Just the thought of going through that again makes me shudder. But Tegan and Sara—Canadian indie pop rock duo, twin sisters, and longtime LGBTQ advocates—are reclaiming that narrative and time in their lives as their own and turning the age-old clichés into unique melodies and poetic lyrics on their new studio album, Hey, I’m Just Like You, a collection of songs they originally wrote and recorded as teenagers that were purposely lost for years until the twins started digging through the past while writing their new memoir, High School.

At the time, Tegan and Sara had no confidence in the songs and remained convinced for decades thereafter that they would never see the light of day. That all changed earlier this year. Last spring, they began reworking and rewriting each track, keeping the “essence” of each song, and soon decided that these remastered recordings from their high school days would become their ninth studio album. As the duo put it, “This is the record we never could have made as teenagers, full of songs we never could have written as adults.” And that’s what makes it so wonderful.

In high school, the twins were not the queer icons we know and love today. Quite the opposite, in fact. According to Sara, they were “dirtbags” who were “stoned on acid, sneaking out, skipping school, lying to our parents,” and still very deep in the closet. It was their experimentation with drugs that led to a newfound understanding amongst the sisters that they had previously lost. As young kids, and as with most siblings, Tegan and Sara were inseparably close: they cried when they weren’t in the same elementary school class and their experiences and memories often felt interchangeable—in other words, there was no Tegan without Sara, and no Sara without Tegan.

Tegan and Sara, 2019 (Photo: Trevor Brady)

That all changed by the time they were teenagers in high school, when battle lines were drawn in the name of hormones, emotions, and the ever-present conflict of individual identity. But when they were on acid, they found a new type of love and admiration for each other, and it was this love and admiration that led to some of these songs being written—namely the title track “Hey, I’m Just Like You,” in which they realized many of their struggles were shared, and that together they could face the fact that they were both a little messed up and blue. It’s been over twenty years since Tegan and Sara were teenagers, but these emotions and feelings appear more poignant, heart wrenching, and relevant than ever on these songs which, in the words of Britney Spears, are remixed, reimagined, and still iconic—even though this is the first time they’ve been released.

Tegan and Sara began their career as indie rockers before venturing into synth-pop on their largely celebrated seventh studio album Heartthrob (2013). Their last studio album, 2016’s Love You to Death, was completely pop-focused and was described by The Guardian as a “commercial flop, a box-ticking exercise, with the band’s spirit lost under the sheen.” Other critics have also suggested that the duo was selling out during that era, despite the fact that they were merely exploring their penchant for different sounds and production values. Whatever the case, the twins have returned to their roots on Hey, I’m Just Like You in the most interesting way possible. They haven’t abandoned their newfound tendency for pop production, but they’ve also returned to the indie pop rock vibes found on their earlier records such as So Jealous, The Con, or Sainthood.

The new album’s lead single, “I’ll Be Back Someday,” contains the production that embodies this throwback while also containing the catchy lyrics and melodies found in any other successful pop single. The duo are also exploring their sexuality in their lyrics in ways they never have before, in the form of the repressed feelings of closeted teenagers. “Hold My Breath Until I Die,” “Hello, I’m Right Here,” and “I Don’t Owe You Anything” all express the choked-down emotions of a teenager who has been knocked down by their desires and are not yet sure how to get back up. Hey, I’m Just Like You’s song titles are just melodramatic enough to work—since they are about high school, after all. “Don’t Believe the Things They Tell You (They Lie)” and “We Don’t Have Fun When We’re Together Anymore” are achingly reminiscent of all the awkwardness required in being a teenager, but also evoke such strong imagery that is scarcely found in other records of the same nature. “I Know I’m Not the Only One” functions as both an ode to knowing you’re not alone in your queer desires but also as an ode to merely being different—to not fitting in, to not wanting to fit in, and knowing deep in the cloud of self-doubt that other people who feel like you exist. Finally, the album’s closing track, “All I Have to Give the World is Me,” functions as the necessary dismissal of these youthful insecurities. It possesses the same relevant message that Judy Garland sang sixty years ago on “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love”—that we are all enough as we are, and you’re going to have to take it or leave it.

Tegan and Sara in the music video for "I'll Be Back Someday" (Photo: Rolling Stone) 

Perhaps the strength in Hey, I’m Just Like You comes from the fact that the emotions expressed in these songs only come into focus later on in life—once we’ve gained perspective on the fact that we are all just like you: we all tend to struggle, we all tend to have our hearts broken, we all tend to feel too much. But as teenagers, we think we are in fact the only ones and that everything is the end of the world. And only by reworking and reimagining these songs all these years later have Tegan and Sara been able to chip away at the true meaning of the age-old anxieties of youth: that, on one level or another, we are all just like each other. But we will only figure this out later. Indeed, the twins were right to assume that this is an album they never could have made as teenagers, full of songs they never could have written as adults. Hey, I’m Just Like You emphasizes the importance of time capsules—of capturing our feelings during a specific period and locking them away for later. We never think they will become of any value, but we’re wrong. Or at least Tegan and Sara were wrong, because I can only hope these songs will bring strength and understanding to teenagers who aren’t strong enough yet, and to adults who haven’t confronted the past in a while. It’s worth it, and you’re worth it.

Jeffrey’s favorites from Hey, I’m Just Like You: “Hold My Breath Until I Die,” “Hey, I’m Just Like You,” “I’ll Be Back Someday,” “I Don’t Owe You Anything,” “I Know I’m Not the Only One,” “Please Help Me,” and “All I Have to Give the World is Me”

Natasha Bedingfield Gets Political on Her First Album in 9 Years (Album Review: 'Roll with Me')

The year was 2004. “These Words” was all over the radio, and you were enamored by the fact that British pop singer Natasha Bedingfield was indeed able to write a classic about writer’s block. “Unwritten” then followed—the title track from her debut studio album of the same name. The song would make its way into two teen movies in 2005, Ice Princess and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and became the theme song for the MTV reality series The Hills in 2006. Thereafter, the song reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, was the most-played song on U.S. radio that year, received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (she lost to Christina Aguilera), and became the third highest-selling song by a female artist in 2006, behind only Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” and Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous.” Life was good.

Bedingfield’s follow-up album, Pocketful of Sunshine, was equally popular and saw the continued success of its title single, which also peaked at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 3 on the Canadian Hot 100 in 2008. This song too made its way into several American television series and romantic comedies, including The Ugly Truth and Easy A. At the time, Bedingfield named it her favorite song, commending it for centering on embracing positivity and dancing your troubles away. It would be then that she would be typecast as “perky, sunshine, and empowerment,” and empowering tracks like “Unwritten” and “Pocketful of Sunshine” would be what would become expected from Bedingfield. This is nothing new—she accepted that long ago, but only now has she started using it to her advantage.

In 2010, Bedingfield returned with Strip Me, her third studio album. While seeing the moderate popularity of the impeccably underrated “Touch,” the album became somewhat of a commercial failure, charting in only three countries worldwide and barely reaching the top 100 of the Billboard 200 chart. Underrated is the only suitable word for Strip Me, an album where Bedingfield grew with her songwriting and production and showcased her ability to exist outside of white girl songs from the 2000s. In 2012, she spoke about how she had started work on a fourth album, tentatively titled The Next Chapter, working with producers such as RedOne and Dr. Luke and expressing plans to release the album internationally—given that Pocketful of Sunshine and Strip Me were both released in different versions in the U.S. and the U.K., often with different covers and track listings, something she described as jarring and “devastating” that she would turn her back on her native country to meet the demands of the American pop market. She said that, in a lot of ways—excluding “Unwritten” and “Pocketful of Sunshine”—most of her music “just didn’t translate” when it came to commercial success in different regions, especially the United States.

After that, Bedingfield took a break. She did a song with Lifehouse, contributed to Disney and charity soundtracks, and recorded some other under-the-radar collaborations. She toured with Band of Merrymakers, Night of the Proms, and Train. The Next Chapter was never heard from again. She knows most people think she vanished, and honestly, she’s fine with that. “It’s almost worse to be overexposed, or to be in someone’s life too much,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing for an artist – especially a songwriter – to withdraw for a bit and live a bit of life.” Then, in the summer of 2019—nearly nine years since her last album—Bedingfield released the song “Roller Skate” and later confirmed it was the first single from a new album. The record, Roll with Me, followed in late August, her first release under Universal and the independent label We Are Hear, an empowerment-focused company run by women.

Natasha Bedingfield for Billboard magazine, 2019 (Photo: Kenneth Cappello)

Roll with Me was produced entirely by Linda Perry, the renowned songwriter and producer behind a number of pop classics by P!nk, Christina Aguilera, and Gwen Stefani. The album marks the arrival of a new grown-up, politically aware Natasha Bedingfield. “It definitely touches on some deeper and more social issues,” Bedingfield told Variety. “As a pop singer, often you’re just entertaining people or singing things that are uplifting, and discouraged from being political. But having done this for so long with a microphone right in my face, I feel like I’ve earned the right to talk about stuff that really matters to the world — or to me. And, how can anyone with a heart write something that’s true without touching on some of those issues right now?”

Social and political climates aren’t the only thing that have informed Bedingfield’s new music. About two years ago, she and her husband of ten years welcomed a son, Solomon, and Bedingfield says motherhood ignited a flame in her to promote positivity and caring about our world. “It made me want to be more socially aware and less willing to ignore that stuff... I just feel like I had a new kind of courage,” she said of parenthood. Bedingfield had still been working in music and in studios for much of the last decade, working with names like Nick Carter and Bebe Rexha, but it wasn’t until recently that she decided it was time to revive her own recording career. Actually, it wasn’t until Linda Perry called that she realized she wanted to make another album. Struggling with finding her place and her footing as a woman over twenty-five in the male-dominated pop music industry, Bedingfield described herself as feeling “creatively stifled [on a] major label” in the earlier years of her career, and that Perry recognized this struggle for artistic control right away. She invited her to join We Are Hear, an offer which Perry described as a “no-brainer,” since she very much admires Bedingfield as an artist. “Natasha is a deep feeler,” Perry said. “She wants to have purpose — she needs to have purpose. Singing about rainbows and unicorns is not where she wants to shine. Her intentions are to heal not pacify.”

“Kids and guns, starting out so young” begins Roll with Me’s fourth track, “Hey Papa.” It’s a prime example of the socially and politically aware themes that the album explores. Bedingfield says the song’s title is in reference to the “metaphorical male figures” we’re often told to look for when things go wrong, “like dads or gods,” which brings to mind similar themes explored on the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where is the Love?” during the Bush administration. “Obviously the hero is me and you, but we’re looking to all these people outside ourselves during this weird time,” she explained. “[Y]ou turn on your phone and it’s like, ‘What bad thing happened while I was asleep?’” It begs the question, are Bedingfield’s classic earlier tunes—reminiscent of a simpler time—needed now more than ever? “When there’s prosperity and an amazing leader in charge and everyone’s jobs are doing well, people for some reason like to hear sadder songs,” Bedingfield said. “But then when there is bad news every morning and the world feels divided, we need music that takes us out of that place. It’s a reason to get out of bed. But also maybe people are more willing to own what they find pleasurable [now]. And be like, ‘Yeah, this is what I like!’ And celebrate it.”

Above all, Bedingfield knows the undying, timeless power of music, especially during difficult times. The album’s lead single, “Roller Skate,” is a unique earworm that indeed makes you want to get outside these concrete ceilings and roller skate all around London. Life might be oppressive, but music reminds us that we can exist outside of that. “So many tragedies happen before you even leave your own bed,” she said. “That’s when you really need music. Music helps you get out of the panic.” It might seem like Roll with Me is a departure from the earlier empowering, “lighthearted” Natasha Bedingfield, but it’s not. The album might not be game-changing in terms of sound or production, but it’s the lyrics and themes that again stand out the most. “Entertainment can be both — it can be entertaining and it can be about things that matter,” she explained. “There’s been a microphone in front of my face most of my life, and it’d be terrible if I didn’t say some stuff that really mattered.”

Natasha Bedingfield performing at the 12th Annual Super Girl Surf Pro in July 2019 (Photo: Getty Images)

Another particular highlight of the album is the female empowerment track “No Man I See,” which preaches that women should never let men convince them that they are not strong or that men are superior. It’s something that Bedingfield and multitudes of other female artists in the pop music industry have experienced, namely her former songwriting partner Bebe Rexha, who recently took to Instagram to discuss how a male record executive told her she was getting “too old” to dress provocatively at 29 years old (in response to which she released the empowering single “Not 20 Anymore”). Bedingfield says she’s experienced the exact same thing working in the music industry, stating that not until working in music did she know that 30 was supposed to be old. “That’s not even half your life,” she said. “When I turned 30, people would say stuff to my face, but I was like, ‘I feel great!’ I enjoy being experienced and I feel young because I’m always trying new things and feel like a beginner.”

Roll with Me also doesn’t shy away from experimenting with different sounds and influences, including reggae on “King of the World” and gospel on “Wishful Thinking.” Things also get melancholy as Bedingfield contemplates the future on “Where We Going Now,” and the lyrics continue to get political on “Can’t Look Away.” Since signing with an independent label, Bedingfield describes herself as “being in a good space,” and loved making an album with only one other person. “I feel like writing an album with one person and letting that person produce it, that’s given me a freedom because it’s let me explore a different side to myself,” she explained. “A producer is allowed to have a vision. Sometimes if you’ve had some hits, you end up chasing them and writing something that sounds like ‘you.’ Everyone expects it to sound like your other thing... your label does particularly. It’s freeing. Actually having constraints frees you.”  Bedingfield also described Linda Perry as being known for “taking people out of their comfort zones and bringing out a new side to them,” saying, “[S]he really took me to a different place and I felt a new kind of freedom having one producer do the whole album. She gets a vision for something and she’s pretty determined! Every musician who works with her ups their game.”

As if a new album and a new vision weren’t enough, Bedingfield also had the pleasure of re-recording her vocals for “Unwritten” for the theme song of The Hills reboot, with some help from Perry. As for the fact that she will probably be remembered best for “Unwritten” for the rest of her life? It doesn’t bother her. In fact, she sees it as she should see making an era-defining song: as an impeccable achievement. “I love that that song has surpassed me. When people sing that song, they’re not actually thinking about me, they’re thinking about something in their life, and a moment that that song represents for them, and I love that. The goal of every mum is for their kid to leave home, so ‘Unwritten’ is its own full-fledged human being right now! I did my job!”

Jeffrey’s favorites from Roll with Me: “Kick It,” “Roller Skate,” “Hey Papa,” “It Could Be Love,” “Where We Going Now,” “Can’t Look Away,” and “No Man I See”

Book Review: 'You Asked For Perfect' by Laura Silverman

"You know, people do have more difficult problems. But your anxieties are still real. They still count, yeah? "

This was a very insightful, relatable, and romantic YA novel. It brings about several different themes that are very relevant for youths in this day and age, especially in the American school system, regarding pressure and perfectionism. You Asked For Perfect centers on high school senior Ariel, who has spent the better part of his life perfecting his future college resume: first chair violinist, dedicated volunteer, active synagogue congregant, and expected valedictorian. After he fails one calculus quiz, he enlists Amir as a tutor and discovers that while he doesn't like calculus, he likes Amir. But Ariel is about to learn that there's only so much pressure one person can take. I often think that adults don't realize how much pressure there is for students, especially the AP students seen in You Asked For Perfect, to uphold a certain standard of perfection - perfect grades, perfect test scores, perfect college, perfect life. But as any adult or student can tell you, life rarely works out the way they say it will. So we might as well be messy while we can.

You Asked For Perfect resonated with me on several different levels, given that I am a lifelong perfectionist and currently what I like to call a detoxing perfectionist. I didn't experience the same kind of pressure that Ariel experienced at the hands of his school system, where everything is a competition and the adults who are supposed to be there to help just shame you for not constantly being perfect, but I have been held hostage by my own impossible standards of perfection for most of my life (you can read more about that over on my mental health blog, It's Not That Deep). As much as there are many school systems that do set impossibly high standards for students to live up to, mainly in private schools and in AP programs, I like to believe that many children were perfectionists before school got involved. I'm not a fan of entirely blaming society for making kids anxious and pressuring them to be perfect. That certainly exists, but it's the people who feel the compulsion to meet those standards that most probably also have another set of personal standards they have to meet in their head. Perfectionists are at the mercy of the voices in our heads, and the pressure of society only makes that worse - not vice versa.

I very much related to Ariel's inner struggle to be perfect and appear perfect, especially since a lot of it ties in with other anxieties associated with youth that aren't entirely normalized: for example, comparing yourself to other students. That kid got a good grade, why can't I get a good grade? What's wrong with me? That person seems to manage with the same workload I have, why can't I manage? These thoughts are toxic and repressed, and we don't talk about them enough - especially not as teenagers. We internalize the need to be perfect because we think it will pay off later. But just as I learned, no one in adulthood is going to stop and commend you for the time you've spent trying to make everything perfect. In real life, no one cares. Adults aren't held to the same impossibly high standards that children are held to, and in my opinion most adults don't realize the extent to which perfectionist children internalize these thoughts and urges until it's too late. But despite relating to Ariel's struggle on one hand, on the other I was removed enough from those struggles myself to have a different perspective. Ariel was taking on too much, but he wasn't old enough or wise enough to understand that yet.

Another thing to commend about You Asked For Perfect is its diversity. Not only are most of the characters Jewish or Muslim, but Ariel is also a proud bisexual boy who has a romance that doesn't end tragically or inevitably. Ariel and Amir are officially one of my all-time favorite LGBT couples in all of YA. Their romance is very well written - their flirting and sexual tension was adorable and I often lost myself while reading their interactions. In other words, Ariel and Amir = SWOON. Their families were also surprisingly open and supportive of their sons dating each other which was also amazing to see? The author was definitely subverting the typical conservative reactions that most Muslims and other religions have in regard to LGBT people, so that was wonderful.

A few things I took issue with in this book: I expected a better conclusion to Ariel's struggles with being the perfect student. It seems to me that he kind of just started to realize he doesn't have the time or energy to be stressed over everything and decides to drop a class, which would therefore take him out of the running for valedictorian. I was honestly expecting some full-fledged breakdown to happen where the pressure began to compromise his physical and emotional strength (because, y'know, that happens in real-life, I can attest). You Asked For Perfect also felt way too short and therefore didn't explore the relevant issues it brings up as much as I would have liked. I would have liked some between-the-lines acknowledgement of the pressure that is put on AP students in American schools, and perhaps what needs to change going forward to ensure better mental health for teenagers. The last half of the book didn't really seem to focus on much at all besides Ariel and Amir's relationship and the lives of their friends, which felt like a lackluster conclusion to a story with such important themes explored more in the beginning. You Asked For Perfect is not perfect, but it did bring us a new couple for me to ship and gush over. Please don't remind me that they aren't real. 3.5/5 stars.