Fourteen years and one TikTok resurgence later, Aly & AJ are not only still making music — they’re somehow making the best music of their lives. “We always knew there’d be another album,” Aly says, “we just needed the time to do it right.” The result is the hilariously long-titled a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun, which the sisters say really fast now like it’s one long German word. And no, they’re not abbreviating it. “We just say the whole thing,” AJ laughs. “It’s still shorter than Fiona Apple's second album.”
This time around, the sound isn’t Radio Disney — it’s Laurel Canyon with a side of Disintegration. “We made this with a live band, on the West Coast, for California kids,” Aly says. “We wanted it to feel timeless. Like you could put it on in any year and it wouldn’t feel out of place.” Then, almost like a dare, they brought in Nancy Wilson from Heart and Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing to help warp their sun-soaked vision into something closer to shimmering shoegaze melancholy.
“None of us were in the same room,” AJ explains. “We just kept stacking the parts remotely until it felt right. And Jack was like, ‘Can I add some synths, maybe something weird?’ We were like, ‘Please, absolutely.’” The result is “Listen,” the sisters’ favorite song on the record, and a pretty strong contender for yours too.
But this isn’t just a West Coast love letter — the lyrics run deeper. “There’s a real throughline of hope and getting back up on your feet,” AJ says. “Especially after the year we all had. We were writing before the pandemic, but once everything hit, it gave us time to sit with the material. Really comb through the lyrics. More than we ever had before.” Aly nods. “We’ve never been careless with our writing, but we pushed ourselves more on this one. And it shows.”
It also shows in their not-so-subtle barbs at the previous administration, especially in songs like “Slow Dancing” and “Listen.” “Originally, ‘Slow Dancing’ wasn’t about quarantine,” Aly says. “But we went back and rewrote the verses. We added the line, ‘The battle outside is blazing,’ and that was everything we were seeing — the hate, the destruction, the sadness. We wanted it in there, but not so obvious that it felt preachy.”
Still, they nearly went full Dylan. “We wrote a protest song in November,” AJ laughs. “It was kind of too late. We missed the election. We were like, ‘Save that for a rainy day.’”
Not that activism is foreign territory. The duo publicly supported Amy McGrath’s doomed Kentucky Senate campaign (“We were devastated,” AJ admits), and rallied their fans around voter registration efforts. “It was incredible how many young fans were hyped to vote for the first time,” Aly says. “We’d never been that proactive in an election before.”
Their vintage aesthetic, jangly guitars, and dreamy harmonies feel more 1972 than 2021, and that’s intentional. “We don’t feel like we belong in this era,” AJ says. “We’re turning 30 and 32 and it feels like we live in another time. We just wanted the music to reflect that.” She namechecks Grace Slick and Janis Joplin as influences, which somehow pairs perfectly with Jack Tatum’s dreamy synth layers and the dusty golden hour glow of their lyrics.
And yet, right when they had moved on from their teen-pop past, the past came stomping back. Potential Breakup Song went viral — again — thanks to TikTok and its eternal appetite for millennial angst. “It does feel like, ‘Oh God, this again?’” AJ admits. “But also, that melody? It’s an earworm. It connects. Always has.” They’re even rehabbing it for the new tour. “We’re working on it with our musical director now,” Aly says. “We want it to fit the vibe of the new stuff. It can’t stick out like a sore thumb.”
What’s next? More shows, more songs, more everything. “We’ll be gone at least four months out of the year in 2022,” AJ says, back when that sounded far away. And more crossover with their acting careers seems inevitable too. “We’ve played musicians in TV and film,” AJ shrugs. “Just not as Aly & AJ. Yet.”
In the meantime, they’re writing again. Already. “We want to keep the fire burning,” Aly says. “We’ve waited long enough. Now we’re just getting started.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
