Closer, Still
“If anything, life saves the song – over and over again”
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Closer, Still: The Pop Wisdom of Tegan and Sara
When Tegan and Sara’s “Closer” was unveiled across bummed-WiFi-fueled iPhones in September of 2012, I had grown tired of my position in life as that of someone who felt decidedly “far away” from the world around me. At the risk of sounding both pretentious and pathetic, my quarter-life crisis had apparently hit some sort of second wind - meaning I had taken certain should-be-recreational activities in my life much further than they were ever designed or meant to go. I was at the end of a proverbial rope, or a crossroads, or some other cliche about becoming the person you really want to be but, you know, first having to make a series of difficult and not always friend-supported decisions related to how you spend your time, and the very unique - to you! - value and definition of that time. And what is time? An arbitrary measuring stick we hold up to accumulated sunsets, sure; but it’s also how we, as people, decide whether or not we, as people, have failed or succeeded at this ridiculous little game called Life. Now, this is not an essay about how a song changed my life. Rather, I’d like to think this is about the inherent grace of tastefully making the right decisions. This is, I hope, about coming to the end of that proverbial rope, and realizing it’s not about, necessarily, the path of least or most resistance. Instead, success or failure (whatever those words mean to you) lies in finding the most natural path...the Path of Most Grace.
For those who have followed the Quin sisters’ Path of Most Grace, the scrappier and noticeably less-refined elements of their earlier work comes as no surprise. For some (perhaps, even, for Tegan and Sara themselves), a return to these beginnings might bring the same sort of bashful grimace or embarrassed shrug often reserved for your mom dragging out old yearbook photos or your on-again/off-again “best friend” tagging you in unfortunate #throwbackthursday Instagram posts. But really we grimace not because we are actually embarrassed; but rather, we know how it felt to be that version of ourselves as compared to how it feels to be this current version of ourselves. Like a distorted mirror, we see that not very little has changed, while acknowledging that - in fact - almost everything has changed. How we handle and inhabit these changes, of course, establishes whether or not we travel through life on that Path of Most Grace.
Thankfully, the Quin sisters have been on such a path for many, many moons. Once the found musical gem you kept proudly in your backpocket, Tegan and Sara are now, rather inarguably, more of a lovely little lapel on the community button-down shirt of Pop in 2014. Yet, the once unavoidable cry of “sell out” from bygone eras (though, admittedly, now quite possibly an improbable claim for any artist) wouldn’t even begin to apply to Tegan and Sara. Even a surface-level study of their catalog reveals a long trail of Pop crumbs, all the way from 1999’s Under Feet Like Ours to 2009’s Sainthood. These little hints at the Pop behemoth to come traveled confidently on a decade-long journey from our tedious 7-disc-changers all the way to our meticulously well-sequenced Spotify playlists with faint acknowledgement; yet, in retrospect, we were listening to our next great Pop duo the entire time.
Nearly two years after its initial release, “Closer” (from the impeccable 2013 album Heartthrob) stands as both a testament to the power of flawlessly executed Pop (and all its beautiful simplicities), and as irrefutable proof (from famous friends and loyal fans alike) of the inevitability of Life, Love, and All Things in Between - i.e. the broad but welcoming canon of Pop. I said earlier this wasn’t an essay about how a song saved my life, and that holds true. If anything, life saves the song - over and over again. They’ve changed, but so have you. And in that, we are (gracefully) the same. Closer, still, to becoming who we already were - be it popstar or otherwise.
[Header Photo by Rick Perez]
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