Despite headlining their own sold-out national tours back home, over the past six months The Veronicas have approached U.S. crowds in a different way, playing at intimate venues and as guests for the likes of Natasha Bedingfield, the Jonas Brothers, and most recently, Hanson.
“It’s actually very humbling for us and I think it’s a good thing. We can appreciate we’re not as well-known in America and we’re still climbing that ladder in some ways,” Lisa says. “It’s good to be able to play to an arena or an entertainment center in Australia and then be able to strip things back a bit and play to more intimate venues over in the States. And to tell you the truth, we’re pretty lucky to be able to play those kind of shows because we can reconnect with the audience again; we can talk to the fans, whereas at huge stadiums it’s very much all about the show.”
In Australia, The Veronicas can’t walk down a street or inside a mall without getting mobbed by hordes of screaming fans—so as you can imagine, gracing crowds as openers rather than headliners is a massive change for these 23-year-old chicks. But Lisa says their experiences so far have been incredible.
“These kinds of opportunities in the States have been pretty insane. The artists usually get to choose who they want as guests and the fact that the Jonas Brothers chose us, and that Hanson chose us to be support for part of their tour was great,” she says. “But breaking into the U.S. market is extremely hard. We’ve been working at it for two to three years now —as much as we can—and I think we’re the closest we’ve ever been to people knowing who The Veronicas are, which is a great feeling.”
The duo recently released Hook Me Up, their second album, which marked a giant musical leap for the band. Boasting electro-pop dance tracks, infectious hooks and of course the girls’ trademark killer harmonies and crisp vocals, it was a huge departure from their guitar-based pop-rock debut The Secret Life Of… Lisa says they were heavily influenced by L.A.’s underground music scene and wanted to push themselves on their second delivery.
“The last thing we wanted to do was make a record that we [already] made. We’ve grown so much, we’ve evolved as artists and we wanted to do something that was going to challenge us and inspire us, and keep us inspired to make more music,” she says. “We definitely had a direction we wanted to go in and we knew what we wanted. The kind of music that was inspiring us at the time through traveling the U.S. was a little more electro-rock and that definitely had a huge impact on us.”
Offering insight into the betrayal, loss, love, hurt, desire and empowerment the pair has lived out and learnt from, they totally nailed their new beat-driven album, filled with radio- ready hits, dancefloor anthems and even a moving power ballad. Working with the likes of Toby Gad, who helped pen Fergie’s huge hit, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” as well as producers Shelly Peiken (Christina Aguilera), John Feldmann (The Used, Good Charlotte) and Billy Steinberg (Madonna) also proved key to album’s success.
