Tegan and Sara drop new single ‘Smoking Weed Alone’
Canadian indie rock duo Tegan and Sara are staring down the imminent release of their tenth studio album, Crybaby. Just to make sure you’re all paying attention amid the crowded release day (which also features new albums from Arctic Monkeys, Dry Cleaning, and Taylor freakin’ Swift), the pair have dropped one final single, ‘Smoking Weed Alone’.
Tegan Quin was the original writer of the track, which takes on an appropriately wonky arrangement. While the instrumental backing track is bubbly and bright, the lyrics are anything but, starting off with a whopper of an opening couplet: “Smoking weed alone, I’m in the woods / Wonder wonder if I’ll get clean again.”
“With this album, I wanted there to be a dialogue that we could have about the songs,” Sara Quin says of the song. “Some of Tegan’s songs became almost like duets because she allowed me to go in there and challenge her to rewrite lyrics. I wanted a narrative that could tie into our relationship and some of the things that were happening in our life, even if the song wasn’t about that. And for ‘Smoking Weed Alone,’ there’s a chorus where we’re sort of singing to each other, and we haven’t done that before in our career.”
The duet portion of the song that rises out of the chorus is indeed a new territory for the well-seasoned duo, who have seemingly spent the last three decades singing to each. They’ve never done it this way, though, almost taking a combative stance trying to one-up each other. Sibling rivalry is one thing, but musical sibling rivalries in songs are always fascinating to listen to.
As mentioned previously, Tegan and Sara are going up against what probably amounts to the toughest release day this year. Each album it goes against will be clamouring for roughly the same audience, and I don’t expect Crybaby to come out on top. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad album. Far from it – it’s great work from a great band. Sometimes this is how the dice rolls, but Tegan and Sara are resilient and will get another chance to shine on their own.
Check out the audio for ‘Smoking Weed Alone’ down below. Crybaby is set for an October 21st release.
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