Veronica (song)

Pop rock
baroque pop

"Veronica" was also Costello's highest charting top 40 hit in the United States, peaking at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, No. 1 on its Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, and No. 10 on its Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

The song focuses on an older woman who has experienced severe memory loss. Costello's inspiration for this song was his grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's. When talking about the song on a VH1 interview, Costello reminisced about his grandmother having "terrifying moments of lucidity" and how this was the inspiration for "Veronica". In his 2015 autobiography, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Costello wrote of his collaboration with McCartney, "I'd brought an early version of 'Veronica' that you would have recognized. . All the words I'd already written were about my paternal grandmother, Molly, or more formally, Mabel Josephine Jackson. In fact, her Catholic confirmation name, Veronica, provided the very title of the song."

"Veronica" and its accompanying video depicts an aged woman, probably nearing the end of her life in a retirement home, engaging in detached reminiscences from her life from young girl to young womanhood (played by Zoe Carides). The video for "Veronica" featured Costello delivering a spoken word monologue to the camera, and occasionally singing the song softly over the original vocal track from the recording. The video, co directed by John Hillcoat and Evan English, earned an MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video.