The Veronicas reveal truth about split after announcing solo projects

Australian music icons The Veronicas left fans stunned on Monday when they announced that they were ‘going solo’ after almost two decades as a duo.

In addition to wiping all posts from the group’s Instagram page, twins Lisa and Jessie Origliasso both shared preview clips on their personal accounts teasing their upcoming solo projects.

Chatting exclusively with Yahoo Lifestyle amid speculation that The Veronicas have officially split, the musicians opened up about their new projects and revealed what’s really going on.

“The Veronicas are not breaking up by any means, that’s not happening,” Jessie asserts, adding that they have new music coming out as a duo “ASAP”.

“We love each other. We're each other's biggest fans.”

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The pair explain that they have created “completely solo projects” for a campaign called ‘The Solo Project’ with Vodka Cruiser, which is in celebration of feminine empowerment and self-love.

“We basically separated for this campaign as a metaphor to introduce ourselves to the public as individuals for the first time and for ourselves to step into a space creatively that could represent solo empowerment,” she details.

“It’s almost like a social experiment in the idea that we're seen as one identity, and people got freaked out that we stepped into a solo identity and that we were representing ourselves for the first time. I think that that was really scary for people, and look, that’s been scary to us in some capacity not to be able to lean on each other as much creatively as we have for 17 years, but it's also really empowering.

“What we keep saying is we're powerful together, but we're also powerful alone, and the whole spirit of this campaign is that we want to encourage feminine people to know they are powerful and they are capable and entitled to pleasure themselves without any permission from the world.”

Cruisin’ On My Own

Lisa describes her new single Cruisin’ On My Own as a love song to herself, with the sound being inspired by her love of blues, soul and classic rock.

“For the first time getting to really connect with myself creatively with absolutely no pressure of what people necessarily expect from the Veronicas was a really exciting concept for me, because that meant I had no limits,” she says.

“I mean, to be honest, The Veronicas work on no limits anyway, but for myself, no prior expectation, so it was just like a limitless world of creativity really.”

She adds that she had “an absolute ball” creating the song and experimenting with new instruments, including a kazoo.

“I hope when people listen to it they can reconnect with that love for themselves and sing at the top of their lungs and it’s just two and a half minutes that they can take for themselves to just kind of celebrate.”

Seeing Stars

Meanwhile, Jessie says that her song Seeing Stars is about “the euphoria that you feel celebrating the feminine”.

“I'm very visual, so I knew before I even started writing the song that I wanted a monster truck,” she laughs. “So my whole song revolved around this idea and I wanted an anthem that’s played when you’re whipping around on a monster truck.

“And also, it was really important to me while I was writing this song to write about the feminine occupying spaces that are predominantly viewed by men, so monster trucks are something that’s generally a masculine sport. I got really excited about that.

“I had so much fun. I wanted it to be like my theme song and I got my dream of the monster truck, which is maybe the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

‘Really weird’

Speaking about what it was like working separately for the first time in their musical careers, Lisa admits she initially found it quite strange.

“I definitely found the music video process really weird without Jessie,” she says. “I think because naturally we play off each other on stage and there’s this great chemistry there in everyday life, so when she wasn’t there to play off, it was a bit of an adjustment for me.

“By the end, I was absolutely loving it, it was all about me, I was getting applauded and I got very comfortable and used to it.”

Jessie adds that while there is new music from The Veronicas coming out very soon, they’re definitely open to working on more projects as solo artists in the future.

"This is the gateway to us reintroducing ourselves to everyone who knows us musically as The Veronicas as individuals,” she continues.

“After 17 years of being known as one identity, it’s really exciting for us to be able to step out into our individual identities. We’re joined by so much, we’re literally identical twins, but we are so different and we have so much to share as individuals. And we’re really excited that this is now the segue into those worlds and being able to share that with people, whatever expression that might be.”

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