Video: Tegan and Sara - Boyfriend

Tegan an Sara are best known in this country for the Lego Movie theme song Everything Is Awesome. Will that change with their upcoming ninth album Love You To Death? Probably not, if I'm completely honest. But for a certain brand of fan, they're synth-pop's best kept secret.

Their new single, Boyfriend, takes songs like Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl or Demi Lovato's Cool For The Summer and tells the other side of sapphic experimentation.

In a recent Pitchfork interview, Sara explained that the track was written about the beginning of her current relationship. Her girlfriend had never dated a woman before, and was still involved with another guy.

"You turn me on, like you would your boyfriend," she sings. "But I don't wanna be your secret any more."

The video shows the sisters being forced into a series of music video clichés - confetti cannons, silhouetted dancers, green screen videos of zebras (?) - but eventually being allowed to be themselves. It's a metaphor for freedom of sexual expression, innit?

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An excellent Tegan & Sara remix

Cast your mind back to December 2011. We Found Love was in the top 10; Little Mix were about to win the X Factor; Azealia Banks was still considered a thing.

Around that time, I also happened across a new singer called That Girl With Dark Eyes - real name Tiffany Garrett Sotomayor - who had been recording some very interesting pop music with Pascal Gabriel of Goldfrapp and Ladyhawke and Blondie fame. Half Spanish, half American, she was recording in France, using synths made in Japan. It was very exciting from an international relations perspective.

Such is the lugubrious pace of the music business that TGWDE is only just getting ready to release her first official EP. A video, Lonely As A Wolf, is due to premiere on the internet (how modern) later this month. BUT FIRST, here is a remix she has done of Tegan & Sara's Closer.

TGWDE gets out her magic duster and polishes an already shiny song to a blinding gleam. It's a clever, subtle reworking - a few more synth pads here, a little funky riff there - but it pinpoints why we should be getting excited about her solo material. Here's a woman that really understands how to fine-tune a pop song.

Listen below, and download it for free on TGWDE's Soundcloud page.

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The best bits of Tegan and Sara's new single

I have listened to Tegan and Sara's new single, I Was A Fool, approximately 12 times this morning. And, after a thorough forensic investigation of the song's structure, melody, lyrical content and harmonic balance, I can confidently assert that the three best bits are:

1) All of it
2) All of it
3) All of it

Basically, I Was A Fool is very good. An epic, yet mid-tempo, lament graced by the midas touch of pop Einstein Greg Kurstin. It sounds like this.



The single is is out on 29 January, and is taken from Tegan and Sara's forthcoming album Heartthrob.

That is all.

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Guetta grip

I wrote a big thing about David Guetta being like the Great Wall Of China: Immense, monolithic and unchanging. Then I deleted it because it was (a) a horrible metaphor, and (b) pretentious bollocks.

The point was that, although Guetta's songs all sound the same, they are spectacularly well-built pop tunes. He is the Stock Aitken and Waterman of "EDM". He is the Alfred Hitchcock of "the drop". He is the Phil Spector of Ibiza, haircut-wise.

What I love about the French DJ is that he makes no attempt to disguise the fact he's sticking to a formula. His follow-up to last year's album Nothing But The Beat is called Nothing But the Beat 2.0. For the lead single Every Chance We Get We Run, he trades brilliant-but-underappreciated singer Sia for brilliant-but-underappreciated duo Tegan and Sara, but that's the only appreciable change.

Tegan and Sara teased the song on their Twitter feed last week, and now the full thing has emerged. You won't be surprised, but you will enjoy.

BEHOLD:
David Guetta ft Tegan And Sara - Every Chance We Get We Run

PS: Not content with a whole new album, Guetta is apparently remixing every track on M.I.A's new record, Matangi. According to this website, her hilarious nickname for the producer is David Forguetta Boutit. Oh dear.

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