Jess Origliasso: [after just getting off the phone with her lawyer] How are you?

Dan MacIntosh (Songfacts): I'm fine. How are you? Lawyers come before journalists. I understand the pecking order.

Jess: Awww, you're sweet.

Songfacts: I'm not going to argue with that. I wanted to talk about some of your more popular songs. And the first one that really got my attention was "This Love," which Ke$ha wrote, and I'm curious as to how you came about recording that song.

Jess: "This Love," that was on our second record. And when we heard that song, we were writing with a good friend of ours, Toby Gad, who's an incredible songwriter. He was camping out in our lounge room for two weeks and we wrote "Untouched" with him, "This Is How it Feels," a bunch of our songs from our second record. And near the end of the two weeks he was playing us a bunch of stuff that he'd been doing, just random stuff that he'd been writing with other people. And he played this song to us, "This Love," that he wrote with the artist Ke$ha, but at the time she wasn't Ke$ha like everyone knows her now. This was about a good 4 years ago (2007), she was very unknown at that point. She was known in the songwriting world a little, but not as the artist that everyone knows her as now.

And we heard it and we were like - amazing song. And it just kind of clicked with the vibe of this record and it seemed to fill something that was missing so far from the record as a journey. And we put forward whether we'd be able to put some vocals down on it and potentially have it on our record. We did that and it ended up being perfect; the record company loved it as a song and our management loved it. So we went ahead and put it on the record.

Songfacts: You have a twin sister and you both write songs. Do you write songs together?

Jess: We do write songs together. It's quite funny, when we first started we would just write the two of us - we weren't used to writing with other people. We started collaborating outside of each other when we were about 16, 17, but we started just writing together. And then we got signed to a publishing deal from the songs we wrote together, and we went on a songwriting trip that was set up by our publishers with a lot of different people around the world. We went to Sweden and London, America, and wrote with people. It was our first experience collaborating outside of each other, and it was fantastic. We loved it. And you learn; you learn to write different ways, like adapting to different circumstances when you write like that. It's not just a band atmosphere. You can write the track sometimes, you can go with a melody or a lyric or a song title which is even just a person that you want to write about. It could be a synth sound or a guitar chord. It can be anything. We were just working our craft of songwriting in different ways, and it definitely helps with all the different circumstances, because a lot of people write very differently.

Songfacts: It's interesting, because twins are kind of on their own wavelength a lot of times. Have you ever written songs where you already know what the other person's going to say? Do you finish lyrical lines before the other person even says them?

Jess: Of course. I mean, not only because we're twins, but because we've grown up attached at the hip for 26 years together. You pick up a good sense of where the other person's head space is. That's not to say we don't have creative differences. Of course we have creative differences. But all in all we're pretty much on the same wavelength as to where a song should go. If there are creative differences, it's usually on lyrics or who sings what or a melody idea, things like that. But yeah, so I'd be lying if I said that there definitely wasn't. It plays a huge part in why we're able to write so well together.

Songfacts: Are you competitive?

Jess: We're competitive, but not with each other. (laughs) We're on the same team, but we're Capricorn, so we have that competitive streak. But it leaves an inspiring energy.

Songfacts: You call Los Angeles home now, correct?

Jess: Yeah. We call it our temporary home. We're children of the universe, our real home is definitely Australia. We both have homes back in Australia. But as far as where we've spent the majority of our growing-up time for the last 7 years, it's been Los Angeles.

Songfacts: Has that changed the way you write? Have you written, for example, any specifically Los Angeles-inspired songs that you can point back to and say, "That's definitely a Los Angeles kind of a song"?

Jess: Yeah. Absolutely. It's funny, I can pinpoint a lot of songs like that. There's a bunch of songs we've written in Sweden. To us it's really quite obvious, because we're so affected by our environment just as humans that we're like, "That's a Swedish song, that's an American song, that's an Australian song." It's quite funny, because we start categorizing as to where we write them. Because of that fact, you do get very influenced by it. But as far as one song, definitely "Untouched."

Songfacts: I like that one a lot. That's an interesting song.

Jess: Thank you.

Songfacts: I was trying to think, How does it feel to feel untouched? And I don't know if I can really describe that. Tell me where the idea of that song came from.

Jess: The idea of that song, we were sitting on our couch in L.A. with our friend Toby, and the way that we went about writing a lot of that record was, we sat down for the first day and talked and gossiped about what was going on in our lives - relationship stuff, friendship stuff, music stuff - kind of a bit of a sleepover party. We pulled ideas from that that day, and Lisa and I were both in long distance relationships at the time. Writing the song, we were talking about how when you meet someone and you want to be so close to them, you feel such a strong attraction energy to that person, it pretty much drives you insane. But because you're at that distance, you feel so much passion, but you don't have that physical closeness. So that will leave you feeling untouched.

Songfacts: Are you still in long-distance relationships, or do you have relationships that are closer to home?

Jess: Well, you know what, the heart is the home. So any relationship that we have that's close to our heart is home.

Songfacts: You're so sweet.

Jess: I thought I answered that question pretty good. (laughs)

Songfacts: Yes, you did. How has Los Angeles changed you? Can you sense that you maybe look at the world differently since you've been in this atmosphere for as long as you have?

Jess: Absolutely. We moved to Los Angeles when we were 19. We moved out of home in Brisbane, which is not the biggest city in Australia, but it's not the smallest, either. We moved to L.A., basically into a house with 5 boys that we met over here that became our best, best, best friends and our family. America is a completely different energy. It's a totally different social culture. And it was at that time when we were growing out of our teens, from being a young girl to a woman. It's an extremely inspiring city, so much great old glamour, music history and movie history here. It's very motivating because there's so many creative people, you feel that buzz when you're here. It's not as laid-back as Australia. My driving has definitely become more aggressive since I've been here. (laughing) I'm insane Ninja driver now. I can get anywhere in 20 minutes.

The people here are fantastic. You definitely grow up a little quicker. With the different people you meet, you're challenged on a social level, you're challenged on a musical level. It's also an incredibly beautiful place. You can go up north to Northern California, you can go to the beaches. And I think the best thing is that there's so much history with music and so many people that love what they do here. Of course, there's a dark side to Hollywood, but you'd have to expect that. It's also inspiring in a kind of sad way. So it's kind of inspiring to what you don't want to be and what you don't want to be suckered into. It's like watching a car crash where you see so many people that do get sucked into that place - you can't tear your eyes away. But it all fuels that creative energy, so I feel lucky that we've spent so much time here and had that chance.

Songfacts: You started very young, and you were talking about the dark side of Hollywood. You sound to me like a very balanced person. How have you gone about keeping yourself from falling into the trap of so many people that start young and just fall off the deep end?

Jess: Thank you - one, for saying that I sound balanced. It's really sweet and it makes me feel good. I haven't always felt balanced. I think I've only become balanced through age, probably the past year, I would say. It's all to do with your environment, as well. We have an extremely supportive family around us - our mom, our dad, our brother, each other. But also our band is our family. We see them as our biggest support, especially on tour. We just keep really good people around us. We have great friends.

I was in a tumultuous relationship for quite a few years, and that made me feel really unbalanced. So when that ended, I found someone who helped me find my spiritual side and helped bring out the positive in how to balance myself as opposed to go to the dark things to relieve stress and tension, like wanting to go and drink or going out and partying and wanting to go and meet a thousand boys or girls. Finding a spiritual center, I totally calmed down. I feel I've definitely regained control of my life and started seeing things for the beautiful reality that they are instead of always feeling like there's a hole to fill. You can fill that hole within yourself, and for me it's been finding a more spiritual life, but there are different ways people can do it. It's just having the desire to want to go there is the major factor. But that was awakened in me from my last partner, which was kind of a gift. So if it can be done in L.A., and it's a fairly hip new way to play, you can do it anywhere. It helps that there are so many great beautiful places to eat here that have great food or diet food and just finding things that you enjoy that have the peaceful vibration as opposed to a more violent vibration.

We spoke with Jess on August 19, 2011. Get more at theveronicas.com.

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