For anyone who has ever danced around their room singing The Veronicas' smash hits "Untouched" or "Everything I'm Not" (so, everyone) we have great news: the pop duo is back and here to stay. Her Campus met up with twin sisters Lisa and Jessica Origliasso in New York City to talk about the seven years since their last album, what they've learned along the way, how they handle heartbreak, and, of course, what's coming up next.
Her Campus: Congrats on this album! Your last album came out in 2007, so what have you been doing during this time?
Jessica: We were battling—
Lisa: We went into battle!
Jessica: I would say our focus was creativity. So we were continuing to write and create in the studio, but at the same time, we were trying to get a record out at our old record label, but that wasn’t happening. We had to go through legal proceedings to get off them and then re-sign to be able to release this music with Sony Music Worldwide. They’ve been unbelievable. It’s just one of those things that’s like—it took a lot longer than we wanted. But at the same time, we grew so much as people; we found so much inspiration and opportunity. I really believe in divine timing and I think that this was meant to be our time now, just to tell our stories and reconnect with people. So, there’s no bitterness left. At the time, when you’re stuck in a situation that you feel like you have no control over—
Lisa: It’s frustrating.
Jessica: It’s incredibly frustrating, but we really turned to finding the spiritual lessons in it and redistributing the power, of where we had placed certain people in authority of our careers, that we just took back. We just took back all the power and realized that we are the ones with the ability to create. We have our fan base, the fans kept us going through the entire experience and we just channeled it into in our music. We knew that one day, no matter what, we were going to have this music heard again. So that’s what kept us motivated and going. That’s what we’ve been through and now we get to reconnect with everyone through the live shows and talking about music. For a long time we weren’t sure if we were going to have that opportunity again. It allows you the grace to really appreciate it now.
HC: How has your music evolved? How is this record different from your previous ones?
Lisa: It has been a bit of time. I think it was just a natural progression for this record to have evolved to the place where it's at.
Jessica: I think that we treat every record like its own entity. With our first record, the creation of it, it was just very much us and our stories. You know, great pop songs on it.
Lisa: We were learning and growing... and learning.
Jessica: Yes, and then the second record, to challenge ourselves, we went through a completely different process of trying a very production-based start with it. We created its own world as a completely different thing. So it went like stories and then production and then we went back to stories. It was about our stories and our challenges and our life experience and our musings on love and relationships. We’re still trying to understand love, three albums in. We’re such different people now. We’ve stepped into a power that you can only find through living life. I think on a sonic scale, this is quite an eclectic record. There’s pop, hip hop, trip hop, country pop, acoustic pop. We didn’t limit ourselves because we didn’t go for one genre like we did on the second record. We were being influenced by so much because we needed constant stimulation to keep ourselves distracted from the bullsh-t that was going on. If we were to only pick one genre we probably would’ve gotten bored after such a long period of time. This is the combination of all of that time, whereas the next record, because obviously we’re banking on the fact that it won’t be taking seven years again to release the next record—
Lisa: (laughs) I hope not!
Jessica: I think it’ll be a more concentrated form, I can already see it being a more production-based record. We’ll do something really different again.
Lisa: I think it really is our confidence in being the women we are today that makes us find power in being vulnerable in these songs as well. A song like “You Ruin Me” is extremely personal, very vulnerable and honest. The idea of that would be overwhelming and daunting, except for the fact that we feel very confident in who were are and our messages and our experiences. We find power within that vulnerability.
Jessica: There’s so much lesson and growth through adversity. We can’t look at those experiences with bitter eyes. I mean, I am a bit bitter. I’m bitter that, you know, they stole some of the greatest years of our career from us, but we’ve moved on from that now and we’re embracing it now. I don’t think we could do what we do today, with such conviction and power of who we are, if we had not had that experience.
HC: You mentioned love earlier, so we have to talk about the “Cruel” video! So this is about an ex boyfriend—
Lisa: Yes!
HC: Where did you draw inspiration from for the video and the song?
Jessica: Deep, dark, thoughts in what we would like to do to people (laughs).
Lisa: Visually, we’ve always been attracted to the weird, the quirky, the slightly uncomfortable, the dark side of things. Cinematographers like Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch. We wanted to make a very cinematic music video and have a real story line. We used an amazing actor in it who has been in a lot of indie films and the stunts were all real and we used a real knife for Jess’s knife fight scene. It was a challenge and it was slightly uncomfortable to shoot and it was kind of weird.
Jessica: You know when you go through something and you go through heartbreak or you see someone in a particular way and you start living our your own film in your head? Sometimes it’s really dark thoughts, but you’ve gotta accept that side of yourself to be able to move into the light eventually. Sometimes you just want to blow some mother f--ker up in a car, you know what I mean? (laughs)
Lisa: I love that about that song in particular. Sonically, it’s a very "pop" song, but lyrically you go, “Wait a minute, this is kind of twisted.” It’s that contrast of that. We wanted to really explore deeper into that side of things with the music video.
HC: Speaking of heartbreak, do you have any advice for our readers about how to move on and progress after going through that feeling?
Lisa: You have to feel it. Feel it in its fullest forms. The dark moments, the pain, the hurt, channel it into something that can help you. For me, it was writing “You Ruin Me.” I was going through the greatest heartache of my life and I channeled it into song and to lyrics and to the melody. That was breaking my heart and healing me at the same time. It takes me right back to that place every time I sing it and I think it’s about really feeling those—don’t lie to yourself and pretend it doesn’t make you feel hurt or maybe it does shatter your self-confidence, but you need to feel that in order to move on from it.
Jessica: Learn from it! The greatest advice in understanding relationships, whatever form of relationship that might be, was that we all have lessons to learn in this life. I believe in karma, so I believe each person that you connect with, on whatever level, whether it’s a friend, a family member, a lover, particularly in the sense of a lover, we let those people reflect parts of ourselves, we let them into a closer part of our souls than we let most people into. I believe that there’s something meant to be learned from each relationship. Whether that ends sadly or beautifully or it never ends, I believe that there is some greater reason that we have come together to learn something. If you can appreciate the relationship, if you can find that thread and that understanding of what that was, even if it’s that you have allowed someone to treat you in a way that you should never have let them treat you, whatever that understanding is, that is a powerful agent for growth. Whether it’s pain, whether it’s heartbreak, whether it’s the person was amazing and you f--ked up and you’ve got to deal with that, I think that looking for that understanding will help you heal quicker and help you progress forward instead of getting caught up in the drama of it, which can be very painful and go on for a very long time.
Lisa: The quicker you can process a true, genuine acceptance of what that love was and with love—with great love comes great pain. You can process that understanding that will help you move forward into making better choices in relationships in the future. It’s hard to get to that place, though. It’s very hard because you have to do a lot of self work. It’s not projecting onto other people on what they did wrong to you and really taking a look into you and into your heart.
HC: You two should write a book on this!
Jessica: I’m actually writing a book at the moment! My guide through the twenties.
HC: Are you?
Jessica: Yeah it’s all my f--king up stories (laughs)
HC: That will be amazing. So, what’s coming up next?
Jessica: We’re definitely going to tour America this year, a full band tour, just after August. We’re going to start writing for the next record really soon, but until then creating more music videos, more singles from this record and just connecting with fans again, reconnecting.
Lisa: We’re releasing a deluxe album of this album in June as well, which will be seven new songs. We’ve been creating new merch for our stuff which has been so much fun.
Jessica: We’ve been doing a lot of activist, charity work. I’m writing my book, we want to make a documentary. We’re sort of always involved in a lot of different things, because we like to keep our minds constantly active. The thing that we’re most excited about as far as the music goes is this deluxe version, releasing new songs and doing full-band touring.
Be sure to check out this dynamic duo's latest album on iTunes!