Sainthood (album)
2009 album by Canadian rock duo Tegan and Sara

Sainthood is the sixth studio album by the Canadian indie pop duo Tegan and Sara, released in the UK on October 26, 2009, and in the US on October 27, by Sire Records.
The album was a shortlisted nominee for the 2010 Polaris Music Prize.
Background
This is the first album by Tegan and Sara to feature a song co-written by the pair, as they usually choose to write separately. However, it was not written while Tegan and Sara stayed together in New Orleans as an attempt to write together. No songs from that time made it on to the album, although one such song lends its title to that of the record. The album title was inspired by a Leonard Cohen lyric. The record also includes co-written songs from Tegan's side project with Hunter Burgan, bassist of AFI.
The album is described by the band as such:
Tegan and Sara's sixth studio album – Sainthood – addresses secular themes of devotion, delusion, and exemplary behavior in the pursuit of love and relationships. Inspired by emotional longing and the quiet actions we hope may be noticed by the objects of our affection, Sainthood is about obsession with romantic ideals.
In the service of relationships we practice being perfect. We practice our sainthood in the hope that we will be rewarded with adoration.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q540444. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sainthood (album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.