"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 a B-side to Bell's only single "I Am the Cosmos." The song is very similar in composition, vocals, and guitar playing to Big Star's "Thirteen," which Bell co-wrote with bandmate Alex Chilton,[1] and is also an acoustic love ballad.[2] It features backing vocals by Chilton.[3]

"You and Your Sister"
Cover of the 1978 US single
Single by Chris Bell
from the album I Am the Cosmos
A-side	"I Am The Cosmos"
Released	1978
Genre	Folk rock pop
Length	3:14
Label	CAR Rhino
Songwriter(s)	Chris Bell
Producer(s)	Chris Bell

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" [3] and as "one of the great unknown love songs in the pop canon, a luminous and fragile ballad almost otherworldly in its beauty."[4]

Two alternate versions of the song appear on the posthumous 1992 I Am the Cosmos release, an "acoustic version" and a "country version."[4] The song is included in the 2009 Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky.[5] It was covered, along with "I Am the Cosmos", by This Mortal Coil on the 1991 album Blood;[6] by Seana Carmody on the 2007 album Barn Songs,[7]; by Mike Daly on the 2001 album A Tribute to Big Star.[8], by James Yorkston on The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society in 2014; and by Susanna Hoffs on her 2021 covers album, Bright Lights.

References