Class Is in Session on Hasitha Guhan’s Latest Song, “Twins”

Would you relive your high school years?

Maybe you’re content digging up your yearbooks.

Singer-songwriter Hasitha Guhan didn’t want to — “Would I want to go back and relive those years? It’s a definite no,” she says — but resurrected old memories for the sake of her art.

Guhan revisits a years-old high school crush on a pair of brothers on her latest single, “Twins,” a song that explores the love triangle trope while walking the line between fantasy and reality.

On it, Guhan sings: “It’s too tempting just to stay put/When it’s twice the fun/It’s so good.”

“The lyrics were really easy to write because I just felt like the song was just so fun,” Guhan says. “It was one of the easiest songs to write, and the melody just flowed with the lyrics.”

Guhan notes that the production of the song is just as fun as its contents.

“I wanted [the production] to mimic the concept, because the concept is silly, too,” she says.

Guhan collaborated with producer Gavin Hudner to give the song an 80s-inspired production. Guhan keeps coming back to one word to describe the song: Funky.

Lipps, Inc.’s classic “Funkytown” was at one point sampled throughout the track. Guhan says she and Hudner removed the sample for legal reasons — something she could have learned from her music industry studies at the University of Southern California. Guhan graduated from the Thornton School of Music this month.

Still, “Funkytown” has its moment on the song: “I love the way they use the vocoder in ‘Funkytown,’ and that was something that I pointed out that I really wanted in ‘Twins.’”

You can hear it on the outro of the song.

But the silly, fun song lets Guhan revisit a period of her life that she calls a “mixed bag.” This time, though, she views her life through the lens of an artist.

“I feel like that’s sort of the reason why I’m pulling from the past, because I didn’t get the chance in high school to really make these concepts or write these songs,” Guhan says.

“There wasn’t a space for people of color in entertainment in my high school.” Guhan attended a predominantly white high school in Northern Virginia. “There wasn’t as much of a space for expression.”

Guhan didn’t put her emotions into art. Now that she can, she says the song is “healing.”

Guhan has a clear message for the boys on “Twins,” but more important is the message she has for her younger self: “Don’t let what others think, or their limiting beliefs, get in the way of what you want.”