Melody Lau - Tegan and Sara: Modern Heartthrobs

On February 22, 2015, a good portion of the 37.3 million people who tuned in to the 87th Academy Awards met Tegan and Sara Quin for the first timeat least briefly.

Performing The Lego Movies earworm anthem Everything is Awesome, one of the five songs nominated in the best original song category that year (it lost to John Legend and Commons Glory from Ava DuVernays Selma), the Canadian twin duo were centre stage for a grand total of thirteen seconds before the floating platform they were standing on spun around to reveal their co-performers: comedy trio the Lonely Island.

From there, the performance became a pretty cacophonic affair: a cast of colourful backup dancers dressed up as characters from The Lego Movie crowded the stage, while others rushed into the audience to hand out Oscar trophies made of golden Lego bricks to A-listers like Oprah and Steve Carell. It was a sensory overload meant to bulldoze viewers into joyful submission. As Tegan and Sara continued to sing the tunes main refrain, an emphatic couplet made for children to shout along to repeatedly until the word awesome loses all meaning, the sisters werent entirely lost, but their black-clad petite frames were near drowning in the zippy choreography. At the songs end, they struck a pose, appearing simultaneously gleeful and overwhelmed while flanked between the Lonely Islands Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer.

As a fan of bright, bombastic displays of fun, this moment was an Oscar highlight for me, and has since rightfully cemented its place on lists of best musical moments ever at the Academy Awards. To see two queer artists performing on one of the highest-rated television events of that year was also a big moment for LGBTQ+ representation: I saw Tegan and Sara in 2002 with 10 other people, total, fan and director Lisa Donato gushed on Twitter at the time, Now they are playing @ the Oscars?! #LGBT. But as a big Tegan and Sara fan myself, I felt a concerned pang after watching their performance. I really hope this isnt the thing that they become best known for, I thought, as I digested a medley of feelings from pride and elation to annoyance and fear.

When youre a fan of an artist, you want them to be recognized for their best work, to have others truly understand what you hear: the melodies that swim inside your head for days; hooks that make you wish you could pick up an instrument and play along; lyrics that induce goosebumps, fist pumps, tears, and more. While Everything is Awesome checks some of those boxes for me, it fails in one important department: it doesnt illustrate Tegan and Saras songwriting skills. The track is a rare release the two sisters didnt pen; the Lonely Island brought them on to sing it for The Lego Movie soundtrack. (In some ways, this works in their favour. If you find the song obnoxious? Not their fault! Love it? Their voices are the stars of that track!)

That Oscars moment, statistically speaking, is Tegan and Saras biggest performance ever. Theyve shared the stage with Taylor Swift, their collaboration with dance music icon Tiesto, Feel it in my Bones, has blared over packed festival crowds, and theyve been interviewed by TV personalities like Larry King and Stephen Colbert. But the Oscars reach is unmatched, even as its ratings continue to decline each year. Its a pretty exclusive group of musicians whove had the privilege to perform on that stage.

When I asked Tegan about the Oscars during one of our many calls, all she could recall is the full-body anxiety she felt that evening. I mostly just blacked out for the experience, she explains. It was complete and total chaos. Our big thing was like, dont get kicked in the face by the possum doing backflips. It was always a joke with us and the Lonely Islandyou dont want your moment in front of a billion people to be getting kicked in the face by a costumed possum. Sara tends to speak in a slightly more severe tone than Tegan. On this, she was even more blunt: Our whole approach was Dont die. Dont lose a finger. Dont embarrass yourself.

I shared my disgruntled take on their performance and my concern that most people would only know them from that single, but I was surprised to hear that neither sister minds. More than twenty years since they first started releasing music, Tegan and Sara have learned to put aside external perceptions. What other people think about that performanceand by extension, anything else they doisnt their problem. Nowadays, the sisters are more focused on how they personally feel and decisions that can help them continue building their career. Theyve got an I-dont-give-a-fuck mentality that I truly admire and wish to fully embody myselfone day. But as any Tegan and Sara fan who has followed their career since they were acoustic guitarwielding teenagers can tell you, the journey to this version of Tegan and Sarathe one I got to spend hours speaking with for two years in service of this bookhas been long and hard earned.