Just Hear Me Out: ‘Untouched’ Is Not The Best Veronicas Song
You have all been led astray.
So, it’s come to this.
The Veronicas are back in the cultural conscience. They kicked off 2019 by turning up during Mallrat’s set at Field Day. Allday managed to sneak them into the Triple J offices without anyone noticing. They joined him again at Splendour, and they’ve just been announced for Beyond The Valley. And what’s brought them here, over a decade since they last held any real clout? That would be ‘Untouched,’ the second single from their 2007 album Hook Me Up.
Thanks to Australia’s obsession with memes, ‘Untouched’ has found its way back into the hearts and minds of an entire generation – consider it to millennials what ‘The Horses’ was just a couple of years ago.
It’s far and away their most popular song, being the only track of theirs to earn chart positions in nine different countries and the easy frontrunner as far as streaming stats are concerned. It’s with this that a point needs to be made — and just hear me out on this one.
‘Untouched’ is by far the biggest Veronicas song…but it is not their best. In order to assess what song is, we need to answer two separate questions.
Why Is ‘Untouched’ Not The Best Veronicas Song?
To be perfectly frank, ‘Untouched’ is not even the best single from Hook Me Up. Rather, that honour goes to ‘Hook Me Up’.
At a time where the twins were attempting to break away from the cutesy frock-rock mould that was set for them on 2005’s The Secret Life Of…, their second album’s title track is as bold a move as they could have possibly made. It’s the closest they ever came to going full electroclash, sounding more like Goldfrapp or Fischerspooner than Josie and The Pussycats.
Sporting a ‘Tainted Love’ motif a lot more subtle than Rihanna’s ‘S.O.S.,’ ‘Hook Me Up’ is a song that means business and has aged considerably well. There’s also the matter of ‘Take Me on the Floor,’ the racy club jam that ultimately deserved a lot more credit than it got. With its irresistible “da-da-da” refrain and its neon-tinged synths buzzing away throughout, it again took the Veronicas sound to newfound terrain with a real sense of ambition to it.
Both are easily stronger songs than ‘Untouched,’ even if we’re just looking at a singular aspect of the songwriting: consistency. Yes, ‘Untouched’ has a massive chorus. It goes off. People love it. But how many of you actually know any other part of the song lyrically? The synth-strings set the whole thing off, of course, but beyond that?
The first verse of the song is absolute gibberish: “I go ooh-ooh, you go ahh-ahh/La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la”? Really? It devolves into stuttering Sprechgesang nonsense, with barely a sense of rhythm or coherence to keep it afloat.
The song is so heavily weighted towards its chorus that the see-saw hurtles the rest of the song into the stratosphere. The song is similar to ‘The Horses’ in this sense — a song where the verse and chorus are so disconnected, they’re not even in the same chordal wheelhouse.
So…If ‘Untouched’ Isn’t The Best Veronicas song, What Is?
To answer this, we need to go all the way back. Right back to the very first time any of us heard The Veronicas. Back to the song that started it all. Well, here we are — so whatcha gonna do? Do I gotta spell it out for you?
That’s right: ‘4ever’ is far and away the best song The Veronicas have ever put out. It encompasses and eclipses their entire discography. It’s the kind of song that bands and artists across the board — rock, pop, pop-punk, whoever else — wish that they had written.
Written alongside Swedish mastermind Max Martin and (now exceptionally problematic) producer Dr. Luke — who were already on a pop-rock roll with ‘Since U Been Gone’ the year prior — ‘4ever’ boasts an exceptional sense of melody, dynamic and catchiness. From the dissonant F-minor guitar snarl going up against the twins’ excitable vocal delivery, right up to the huge splash of the chorus, there’s just so much to love about how this track rolls out. Every line is memorable, the real guitars and drums add a sense of rock urgency and the payoff of the final chorus is the ultimate hairbrush-microphone moment.
How good is ‘4ever’? The track did so well that the producers repackaged it not a year later and gave it to Pink under the name ‘U + Ur Hand.’ It’s a song so nice, they made it twice — and had a hit each time. They certainly weren’t doing that for the other song they wrote for the album, ‘Everything I’m Not’.
No, it was ‘4ever’ that had the lightning in a bottle — and, to this day, remains the best Veronicas song by a considerable margin.
‘Untouched’ could never.
David James Young is a writer and podcaster. He still doesn’t know if people are laughing at or with The Veronicas, but he wishes them all the best regardless. Find out more at www.davidjamesyoung.com.
Just Hear Me Out is a semi-regular column on Junkee and Punkee in which writers air their most deeply held opinions. Read more of them here.