Tegan and Sara have unveiled the new confessional ballad “Don’t Believe the Things They Tell You (They Lie),” from their upcoming album, Hey, I’m Just Like You, out September 27th.
The song — originally written when Tegan and Sara were in high school — examines the ways lies and deceit can cloud any relationship, whether they’re told by others or one’s self. Over a brooding stomp of drums, cut with synths and a prickly guitar, the duo sing in soft harmony, “The thing my mother told me was that everyone would love me/But in the dark I feel so lonely, I’m numb/She said it with so much conviction, but I feel like something’s missing, again/Oh, I don’t love me at all, I don’t love me.”
In a statement, Sara said of the song’s origins, “Our mother tells a story about watching the 1980s television show Punky Brewster with us when we were four years old. The episode’s morality tale focused on lying, and near the end of the show, she describes one of us climbing onto her back, sobbing into her neck and confessing a lie we’d told her earlier in the day. At 15, we started telling lies again, and we absolved ourselves constantly in the lyrics of our songs.”
All the songs on Hey, I’m Just Like You come from Tegan and Sara’s teenage years, and the indie pop duo decided to re-record them after discovering a trove of old cassette tapes while working on their upcoming memoir, High School (out September 24th). Tegan and Sara will embark on a North American tour in support of the album and book, September 24th in Brooklyn.