Through interviews with Tegan and Sara, their collaborators, journalists, and fans, this book explores the multifaceted career of one of music's most celebrated sister duos, from their start as Neil Young's protégés to Canadian indie-rock purveyors and, making their riskiest transformation yet, into mainstream pop breakouts.

Coming up as grunge-loving musicians in the late '90s and early 2000s, Tegan and Sara found themselves awkwardly pushed into categories that didn't quite fit: a novelty twin sister folk act when they wanted to be taken seriously; pop when they wanted to be indie rock; and sellouts when they finally made their bid for mainstream success. As young, queer musicians who didn't see anyone else like themselves growing up (in a time where Internet access hadn't yet formed global spaces and communities for LGBTQ+ people), Tegan and Sara's path to pop stardom was filled with familiar hurdles, but no clear instructions on how to navigate things like homophobic press, niche queer audiences that wanted to claim them, or sexism at every turn.

It's a journey with ups and downs, but Tegan and Sara's perseverance―alongside a music industry and journalism world that's had to learn to confront its own biases―has helped create a musical world today that more readily accepts and embraces queer voices. Featuring continuous sonic transformations, Tegan and Sara's story is essential to Canadian music history. (Invisible Publishing)

Melody Lau is a writer and producer with CBC Music. She has been covering Canadian music since 2009, first on her own music blog The Singing Lamb, and later as an online writer for MUCH and a contributor to Exclaim! Magazine. Her work has also been featured in Pitchfork, Billboard and Nylon Magazine.

"Some of the writing about Tegan and Sara was really what stood out for me when I thought about them and how they were received critically over the years. I love their music, and I thought their albums were great, but I think if you're a diehard Tegan and Sara fan, you think about the 'tampon rock' line — it just didn't feel like that lined up with how much their fans loved them, and how big of a fan base they had.

"At first, I had pitched the book as every chapter would look at a different facet of their career — I originally had a chapter about them being like documentarians, and another with the idea of them as comedians. And eventually, that all got blended into the overall structure of the book.

"That was really a sticking point — I wanted to build a fully formed portrait of who they are beyond simply being pop musicians, or what it is that some people might know about them. I think that was both the joy and the challenge of how to distil all these different parts of them into one book."