| I Am the Cosmos / You and Your Sister | |
| Cover: | I Am the Cosmos-You and Your Sister.jpeg |
| Border: | yes |
| Caption: | Cover of the 1978 US single |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Chris Bell |
| Album: | I Am the Cosmos |
| A-Side: | I Am the Cosmos |
| Released: | 1978 |
| Producer: | Chris Bell |
"You and Your Sister" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Chris Bell, that appears on his only solo album I Am the Cosmos. It was released as the B-side to Bell's only single "I Am the Cosmos". Comparisons have been made to Big Star's "Thirteen", which Bell co-wrote with bandmate Alex Chilton,[1] and is also an acoustic love ballad. Chilton sings backing vocals on the song.
Mark Deming of AllMusic described it as a "sweet, guileless love song" that "represents the sincerity and emotional innocence that Bell brought to his brief tenure in the band Big Star" that "make[s] more emotional sense than literal sense" [2] and as "one of the great unknown love songs in the pop canon, a luminous and fragile ballad almost otherworldly in its beauty."[3]
Two alternate versions of the song appear on the posthumous 1992 I Am the Cosmos release, an "acoustic version" and a "country version".[3] The song is included in the 2009 Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky.[4]
"You and Your Sister" was covered, along with "I Am the Cosmos", by This Mortal Coil on the 1991 album Blood. The single was a No. 13 hit in the Netherlands.[5] It has also been covered by Mike Daly on the 2001 album A Tribute to Big Star,[6] by Seana Carmody on the 2007 album Barn Songs,[7] by James Yorkston on The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society in 2014, and by Susanna Hoffs on her 2021 covers album, Bright Lights.