"Boyfriend" Is Tegan and Sara’s Best Song Yet
Over 22 years and eight records, it would be hard to argue that 35-year-old twin sisters Tegan and Sara have ever made anything but perfect pop songs. In 2013, Heartthrob put their mainstream ambitions on the line with speaker-busting ’80s synth-pop—but it only served to prove how ahead of their time Tegan and Sara have been all along.
Bear in mind, this band opened for Cyndi Lauper nearly a decade ago. Razor-sharp intimacy and supreme catchiness have always been their trademarks—you could imagine anyone from Sky Ferreira to Katie Crutchfield cooly lamenting over a proto-@sosadtoday line like “I wouldn’t liiiike me if I met meee.” Their unassuming deep cuts like 2002′s “Not Tonight” or 2007′s “Nineteen”—songs about privately harbored emotions—could easily be reworked as stadium-sized ballads. Heartthrob‘s stunning “Now I’m All Messed Up” heeded that call, but the first single from the upcoming Love You to Death raises the stakes even higher.
“Boyfriend” is peak Tegan and Sara. More than anything on Heartthrob, its sleek bubblegum fits neatly into our current pop landscape and its debt to Robyn. “Boyfriend,” in turn, is like a sister-song to “Call Your Girlfriend”—tearing at harrowing friend-zone emotional abstractions with a lucid message—but it’s unmistakably queer. (And it makes 2015′s “Cool for the Summer” sound dated already.) In a recent interview, Sara explained that “Boyfriend” was written about the beginning of her current relationship—her girlfriend had never dated a woman before, and was still involved with another guy. “You call me up like you would your best friend/ You turn me on, like you would your boyfriend,” goes the chorus as it plants itself firmly into your skull, “But I don’t wanna be your secret anymore.” It is inspiring to hear a band that’s existed so long come into their own like this, finding new ways to manifest their identities into song. “Boyfriend” rides on a kind of victory: the ecstasy of telling the truth.
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