Music duo Aly & AJ, also known as Alyson and Amanda Joy Michalka, just saw their hit "Potential Breakup Song" go viral on TikTok, but they're not letting their music career be a thing of '00s nostalgia. The sisters just teased the sound of their upcoming album, and it could be the optimistic soundtrack we need for 2021.
Aly & AJ's last album Insomniatic debuted in 2007, and featured singles like the recently resurfaced "Potential Breakup Song" as well as "Like Whoa" and the Joe Jonas-inspired track "Flattery." While the pair released songs like "Take Me" and "Church" in recent years, they have yet to release a full length album. That will change in 2021, when the singers drop their yet-untitled album.
In an interview with PopSugar, Aly, who appeared on the CW series iZombie from 2015 to 2019, explained that the album was inspired by "music from the '90s" as well as "the '60s and '70s," which differs from their more recent '80s synth pop sound.
According to the sisters, the album will embody "California, sisterhood, and optimism."
"I think for us, we wanted to make a record that made people feel good again," said Aly, "and that made people feel hopeful again in a time where feeling good and feeling hopeful seems so strange and seems so unnatural."
Aly & AJ took a 10 year break from making music together, returning in 2017 with a more mature sound. That year, they spoke to E! News about how their sound evolved.
"The music we were writing then was based on fictional relationships," Aly, who married Stephen Ringer in 2015, explained. "We were thirteen and fifteen, we were writing with zero experience. Now that I'm married, and we've each had many relationships and heartbreaks, we're coming at songwriting at a much different way."
While their old tracks are still total bops, it sounds like we have a lot to look forward to in Aly & AJ's next chapter.