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SheWired's sibling publication, The Advocate, featured out twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin as the cover girls for its latest issue, featuring the annual 40 Under 40 list. In the exclusive video below, the out songstresses talk about life, love, and coming out. But first, they dished on their grade-school crushes to Advocate editor in chief Matthew Breen. And the scoop might surprise you.
"When I pitched the idea of Heartthrob, we did talk a lot about how fun it would be to appropriate 'heartthrob,' which is generally attached to males, for ourselves,” Sara says. "Our first loves are heartthrobs — we obsess over something that isn’t real."
For Tegan and Sara, those first loves were shared by a zillion grade school girls: New Kids on the Block. “We were like, We want a piece of them,” Tegan says.
"We had all of the memorabilia and the sleeping bag and the slap bracelet and the music,” Sara says. "I loved Joey [McIntyre] and Tegan loved Jordan [Knight]…. That was probably the beginning of knowing — that the girls that I was friends with, they wanted to kiss Joey, and I wanted to look like Joey."
"But no," Tegan interjects, "our record’s not really about Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block."
It’s really not about Joey or Jordan. Both women are openly lesbian. At age 19, Tegan and Sara were signed to Vapor Records, the label run by Neil Young’s manager, Elliot Roberts. As soon as the press requests came in, Tegan and Sara, both of whom were out to their families, had to contend with being out publicly.
"We had never done interviews before, and a lot of the interest that we were getting was from gay magazines," Sara says, "I remember I felt homophobic. I felt insecure. Like, Oh, my God, should we talk to these people? Are we allowed to be gay? Is that a decision we’re going to have to make right now?"
"People were either asking if we were gay, or 'Do you have boyfriends?'" Tegan recalls. "What are you supposed to say? 'So, you’re writing about your boyfriends?' And we’re like, 'Not really.' I think we’d been signed a month."
Watch the exclusive video below.
