Best Of 2023: The Veronicas Make A ‘Perfect’ Comeback

For most people, if you are lucky, there is something wonderful that happens as you get older — you get more comfortable with yourself and as such can relax and enjoy life more. And with that, you are able to enjoy things much more.

That is the place Australian sister duo The Veronicas find themselves in 2023, nearly 18 years into their career. Working with Goldfinger frontman/super producer John Feldmann (Blink-182, Avril Lavigne, The Used), The Veronicas are back with a new single, “Perfect,” that will lead into next year’s Gothic Summer album on Big Noise.

I caught up with sisters Lisa and Jess Origliasso in L.A. a few days before they headed to Las Vegas to play the sold-out When We Were Young festival, their first Stateside show in 10 years. We spoke about working with Feldy and Travis Barker, being more comfortable with themselves, the pop songs that would best translate into Gothic tracks and more.

Steve Baltin: Are there a lot of bands at When We Were Young that you’re friends with?

Jess Origliasso: Yeah, quite a few actually.

Lisa Origliasso: Yeah, we’ve actually toured with a lot of them back in the day say it like that but.

Jess: When we were young.

Lisa: Yeah, and then we’ve made a lot of this record with John Feldmann who is the singer with Goldfinger. So he’s on and obviously Travis Barker’s on. Drums on some of our stuff too. So Blink-182 are playing and then Avril’s gonna be around I think. She’s not playing, but she’s around.

Jess: We used to be label mates with Green Day on Warner Brothers.

Baltin: These things always feel like a high school reunion.

Jess: Yeah, exactly. It’ll be really great to catch up with people.

Baltin: This is only the second year they’ve done it, but the first year just sold out so quickly.

Jess: Yeah. I think people are sort of passionate and hungry for that. It had some real passion to that era of music and real identity there as well. A lot of people they took on that identity of what that movement was.

Baltin: It’s a very interesting thing. Fans in general have a tendency to be super nostalgic. And yet artists are the exact opposite. How do you strike that balance mixing the past with the stuff you are doing right now?

Lisa: I think we’ve reached sort of like an in-between place. We never had the time to look back ’cause we were always looking forward. So because we’ve had a few years, with COVID and everything, you got time to sort of reflect. And so I think we’re quite in love with a lot of our old music.

Jess: Also because of social media, people are constantly rediscovering or discovering for the first time your old music. So you’re almost constantly re-inspired by it because it’s fun to watch the next generation come up and maybe hear it for the first time and to experience that through their eyes. Whereas back in the day, you would get song requests at a live show and you’d be like, “Oh, I want the old stuff. But now it’s like, because of social media…

Lisa: The old stuff is the new stuff…

Jess: Yeah, the landscape’s changed so greatly. So you do get to kind of feel like it’s new again because you’re experiencing it through their eyes for the first time.

Baltin: Has your perception of your past changed looking at things through their eyes?

Lisa: I honestly look back at stuff and where we used to be a bit cringey or whatever, now I’m actually in awe of how strong we were when we were young. I’m thinking about the fact that we came through at a time when female-led pop was still quite like a push forward in that alt-pop space and we were very strong in what we wanted to sing, how we wanted to look and what we were saying and so I actually look back and I really admire old us. And it does feel like different people. I sometimes think, “Who was that girl? Who are they?” But I think they’re really cool.

Jess: We were very strong, very opinionated and we really did know exactly who we are and what we wanted to say. And we were still kind of babies, I guess figuring it out.

Baltin: Also, if you stay around the industry long enough you are treated with a different respect. Have you found that after 18 years of being a band?

Jess: Yeah, I love that so much. And you’re absolutely right. And I think we’re still discovering how people perceive us, and how they feel about us. It’s still so new. And we’re only just feeling that right now, to be honest. We just went to Erewhon and got recognized by a whole group of girls there. It blew our minds, ’cause we were like, “Oh, they must be Australian.” And they weren’t, they were American. I always want to ask them a million questions, ’cause we haven’t released music in a couple of years. And we haven’t played a show out here in 10 years. So I was like, “How are you such big fans right now?” They all wanted photos, and they were squealing and getting really excited. And I wanted to be like, “What is it that you’ve been doing that you’ve engaged with our music?” It is incredibly exciting. And I’m sure it has to do with social media, and the way that people are discovering music again. It’s cool.

Lisa: I know that TikTok is a big one.

Jess: And we’re not on TikTok, so we don’t see it. But people send us a lot of stuff [and] the music’s very much alive on that platform. And it’s like a renaissance of old pop female music right now, too. So I think that just naturally comes back around because there wasn’t a lot of it back in the day. Like Tegan and Sara, they’re on Sire with us as well. And like Paramore and Avril. But there wasn’t a huge amount of it. So when you’re looking back for that specifically, I suppose yeah, that’s what you find.

Baltin: What is the funniest movie ever made?

Lisa: Have you seen Cosi? Or Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Jess: Cosi is probably the funniest film ever made.

Lisa: I agree. It’s like an opera that they put on in a psych ward.

Jess: It was an Australian film with the most iconic Australian actors. And all these different characters, you get to know them and fall in love with them. It’s dark humor. Yeah, definitely. There’s always that little dark undertone to our humor and the way that we create.

Lisa: We’re cynical.

Jess: Yeah sarcastic, a little cynical. But all in absolute good spirit.

Baltin: Are you at a place where you can enjoy all this more and have fun with it? You’re working with great people. It’s been a while since you’ve done stuff.

Jess: Yeah, 100 percent. And for us, the mark of true success is being able to enjoy it and having the freedom to make those choices of who you want to work with. And what you want to do.

Lisa: Yeah, that has been our marker of success. It’s creative freedom. And it has felt so exciting in this next chapter. And we’ve known Feldy for a really long time. We’ve known Feldy for 15 years just as a mentor and a friend. And we’ve done ton of sessions together. Dabbled a little in the past. But to have been able to actually create a full body of work with Big Noise and with him has felt really fun. It’s been cool, yeah. And obviously, Travis was just in the neighborhood. So he just popped in and put drums down on a couple of songs. He lives it. And that is the best. I feel we do too. Whether or not anyone’s listening, we’re still creating, we will sit around our living rooms with our guitars and sing in harmonies and write songs. We’ll write all sorts of different songs too. It’s not just like, “Okay, we have to create an album now let’s sit down and write.” We’re constantly needing to do it. So in that sense, it’s I get the living and breathing it part. But yeah, it’s an honor to have people who are genuinely passionate musicians. You look at his career trajectory as well. He loves it. We’re only getting to work with the most passionate people. And that’s an honor.

Baltin: Has your relationship with success changed?

Lisa: Yeah, I think that as you get older and you experience whatever the personal success is for you, you start to figure out what you want to keep for yourself. And in terms of writing and creating and then also promoting, when we were younger, we were given camera phones by Warner Brothers early on, and when they just released camera phones we just filmed everything that we could. You didn’t really have that discernment. But I think as you get older, there’s definitely things you want to keep for yourself and but then there’s also, what do you want to share with the world? You have to pick and choose. I find that you really want to get to know me, you can listen to the music. I think everything else around that is just marketing [laughter] context and fun and whatever. For me personally, I think if you want to really get to know who I am as a person, I’ll tell you the songs to listen to. But you do have to give so much more now in so many different ways. There’s some people who are comedians, they’re funny. So they’re on that platform and it works for them. And then that’s how they get people interested to hear what they have to say about music. We’ve always been musicians first.

Jess: We always said we were storytellers. We’ve always been story storytellers.

Lisa: Yeah, and singers, that’s our spiritual connection and together as sisters as well, it’s like our language. So I think, it’s always been the music first, but I know today it’s a whole different world.

Baltin: I look at someone like Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift who are able to use their voices to make a huge impact in different ways. So there’s a lot of positives to come with it as well.

Lisa: Two of our favorite artists are Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish and I, what I love about both those women is they’re doing it their way. I love, it’s, they very, very much, they’re in control. She’s making art, she’s making records. Billie Eilish, she’s making records in her bedroom with her brother. That’s incredible. And she’s thinking about human emotion and experience, and that’s what connects us as humans. So even though it might not be a political statement, it’s a human statement because it’s just something to be able to relate to. And sometimes that’s more powerful than anything else.

Baltin: Tell me about the record.

Jess: Now there is no radio format, you could make anything you want. And you’re just trying to connect with an audience on a streaming platform, which is like literally the greatest type of freedom you can have. So to be able to expand your mind into that and then obviously just being older and loving where we’re at in life and being like content in a new way, you get to just basically create whatever you want. And I think that that’s sort of where we’re at with this record and why we’re just having fun, this whole record for us was just about having fun. Even though we called it Gothic Summer, which people are like, “Gothic Summer what does that mean?” For us where we’re at in our life, our age and our perspective, you can’t get to the experiences that we’ve had and not have a somewhat Gothic perspective on life. But summer’s our favorite season and we love summer music, we love pop music and we love what we do. So we also have different parts of our personality.

Baltin: What pop song would translate greatest to Gothic of all time?

Jess: Gothic pop song, I mean Madonna “Frozen.” Kylie Minogue, “Confide in Me.” Two great Gothic pop songs, obviously if you’re a Nick Cave fan, you know the Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave “Where The Wild Roses Grow,” great Gothic pop song.

Baltin: In the Nick Cave, Kylie Minogue thing, who would be that artist that you have supported each other that would surprise people?

Jess: Probably Billy Corgan, from The Smashing Pumpkins. Insanely complimentary to our songwriting, so much so that it’s almost hard to take it because obviously he’s such an incredible prolific songwriter.

Lisa: I think that’s a great answer.