Pop songs rarely sound as desperate as “Untouched”. It opens with stabbing strings, races along at a breathless tempo, and delivers a chorus that feels like someone gripping the bars of a window. The Veronicas, twin sisters Jessica and Lisa Origliasso, released it in December 2007, and it became their breakthrough single around the world. It’s easy to dance to, and just as easy to misread as a simple love song. The meaning is more specific than that, and a lot more painful. Here’s what the song is about, how it was written, and why it keeps ending up near the top of people’s favourite lists.
Two sisters in Los Angeles
By 2007, the Veronicas were already stars in Australia, but they were also working hard to crack America. Much of their second album, Hook Me Up, was written and recorded in the sisters’ own home in Los Angeles with German songwriter and producer Toby Gad. It was a dramatic change of environment. They were a long way from home, working on a simple computer-based setup in a house that doubled as a studio.
That context matters, because it colours everything on the record. Hook Me Up debuted at number two on the Australian chart and went double platinum, and its songs have a slick, sharp-edged sound. But “Untouched” is the one that carries the real ache.
Writing it with Toby Gad
The song was written by Jess, Lisa and Gad, and Gad produced it. The writing and recording took place at the twins’ Los Angeles house, which is easy to picture: three people, a computer and a few instruments, chasing a feeling until it clicked.
It was released in Australia on 8 December 2007 as the second single from the album, following the title track, which had become the Veronicas’ first number one. Overseas, it was the lead single. Reviewers praised the departure from their earlier sound, and some compared it to the work of Pink and Avril Lavigne. That’s a flattering pair of reference points, but I think the song stands comfortably on its own.
What the song seems to be about
The track relates to the twins’ feelings of separation from the people they loved. In an interview, Lisa explained the theme in simple terms: it’s about not being able to physically touch someone, or be with them, while needing that person all the same.
That explanation unlocks the title. Untouched isn’t about purity or restraint. It’s about someone who is out of reach, and the frustration of knowing exactly what you want and being unable to have it. The lyric has an obsessive, circling quality, as if the narrator is stuck on a single thought and can’t escape it. When you hear it that way, the song stops sounding like a pop thriller and starts sounding like a long-distance relationship stretched to its limit. There’s a second layer too. Being untouched can also mean being unreachable yourself, locked in a feeling that nobody else can get near. I suspect that double meaning is part of why so many people hear their own situation in it, whether that’s distance, a breakup or a crush that goes nowhere.
Why it sounds so frantic
The music is built to match the emotion. The song runs at 176 beats per minute, which is extremely fast for a pop single, and it’s set in the brooding key of F-sharp minor. It begins with strings, which the sisters have sometimes performed with a real string section on stage, before guitars and synthesised drums crash in.
AllMusic described it as bursting out of the gate with majestic, menacing string stabs and a driving synth-rock pulse beneath stuttered verses and a breathlessly obsessive refrain, which is a good summary. Another reviewer noted that speed and pain aren’t mutually exclusive, and that’s the key to the track. It races because the narrator’s thoughts are racing. The faster it goes, the more it feels like anxiety turned into rhythm. The sisters’ voices, which span roughly A3 to E5 between them, wrap around each other in the chorus, and the doubled sound adds to the sense of two people pushing against the same wall. It’s a good reminder that the Veronicas have always been strongest when they sing as a unit.
A video built around doubles
The video, directed by Anthony Rose, was shot at the Marble Bar in Sydney’s Hilton Building. It took eighteen hours to film and used about fifty extras dressed in gothic glamour. The story is almost a comedy of errors. A man spends time with Jess, then mistakes Lisa for her in the crowd, and kisses her. When Jess returns and sees what has happened, the sisters realise he’s trying his luck with both of them, so they walk away together.
It’s a neat way to include the sisters’ real-life bond in a song about being apart. The twins stay united even when someone else tries to come between them, which is a nice, subtle counterpoint to the lyric’s sense of isolation.
An overseas breakthrough that took its time
At home, the single debuted at number four, rose to number two the following week, and stayed there for three weeks. It spent thirteen weeks in the top ten and twenty-nine on the chart overall, and it was nominated for Highest Selling Single at the ARIA Awards.
Abroad, the story was slower and more surprising. In the United States it first appeared on a bubbling-under chart in 2008, dropped away, and then climbed the Hot 100 on the strength of radio play, peaking at number 17 in February 2009. It became the Veronicas’ first and only top-twenty hit there and went double platinum. It reached number five in Canada, number eight in the United Kingdom after a push on music television, and number one in Ireland. The song also appeared in the TV series 90210 and the video game FIFA 09.
The long afterlife
What strikes me is how well the song has lasted. In 2025, listeners voted it number three in the Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, which is a remarkable result for a track that arrived nearly eighteen years earlier. That kind of ranking suggests real affection, and the song has clearly become a generational touchstone for the people who grew up with it. Hearing it today, the production still sounds big and bright, and the emotional core hasn’t dated at all.
Final thoughts
“Untouched” is about craving someone you can’t reach, and the music is engineered to make you feel that craving physically. Strings, speed and a relentless chorus all push in the same direction, towards a release the song never quite grants. The Veronicas took a feeling of homesickness and distance and turned it into a pop anthem that people still scream along to. It’s dramatic, a little unhinged, and completely honest, which is exactly why it has outlasted the trends that surrounded it. If you’ve ever sat in a room thinking about someone far away, you already understand it, and that universal pang is the real reason the song still hits so hard.