'No one will confuse this with any of our other records', Sara says. 'It's got a bigger, bolder, happier sound'. Tegan is explicit about the supersized ambitions motivating the record. 'I kept asking myself: Can I hear this in an arena? Can I hear this on a teenager's iPod as they're riding the bus to school?' Heartthrob doesn't just sound different, it represents a more collaborative way of making music. For the first time, the sisters actually wrote a lot of the songs together (in the past there were Tegan songs and Sara songs), and they surrendered more control than usual in the studio, dividing songs between 3 producers (Greg Kurstin, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, and Mike Elizondo) and a handful of outside musicians to capture the sound they were looking for. Tegan and Sara are both effusive about Kurstin's role in the process.
'No one will confuse this with any of our other records', Sara says. 'It's got a bigger, bolder, happier sound'. Tegan is explicit about the supersized ambitions motivating the record. 'I kept asking myself: Can I hear this in an arena? Can I hear this on a teenager's iPod as they're riding the bus to school?' Heartthrob doesn't just sound different, it represents a more collaborative way of making music. For the first time, the sisters actually wrote a lot of the songs together (in the past there were Tegan songs and Sara songs), and they surrendered more control than usual in the studio, dividing songs between 3 producers (Greg Kurstin, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, and Mike Elizondo) and a handful of outside musicians to capture the sound they were looking for. Tegan and Sara are both effusive about Kurstin's role in the process.