Modern Rock Tracks No.1s - Elvis Costello and "Veronica"

We're going to pump it up with this column and explore Elvis Costello's early years and the song that brought him back to the SNL limelight years after his "Radio Radio" stunt

Elvis Costello - “Veronica”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 2 (3/18/89 - 3/25/89)

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• Debbie Gibson - "Lost In Your Eyes" (3/18/89)

• Mike + The Mechanics - “The Living Years” (3/25/89)

I’m sure if you’re reading this you know at least a little bit about Declan Patrick MacManus, better known to the masses as Elvis Costello. For folks of a certain age, Elvis Costello was a U.K. punk-rock pioneer, and famously remembered as the renegade musical guest on a 1977 episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Even if you weren’t watching SNL at the time, ubiquitous reruns and best-of episodes of the show made this moment easily accessible. After launching into his single “Less Than Zero,” Costello and his backing band ended up making a bit of television history by stopping that song several seconds in, and then launching into a very rad punk ditty called “Radio Radio.”

The problem with this? “Radio Radio” is lyrically a scathing rebuke of the uniformity and corporatization of mass media, a song that Costello’s record label and NBC executives didn’t want showcased in this particular spotlight. There are countless articles and oral histories of this moment, and it caused an uproar and the artist’s outright ban from future appearances on SNL. We’ll talk more about this show ban and its end 12 years later, but it’s clear this incident became a watershed moment for Costello in the U.S., and helped build up a sizable dedicated fanbase.

For someone like me, who was born and grew up during Costello’s most prolific musical period but knew little about it, odds are good your first experience with Costello would have been in the movie theater. Inexplicably, this first introduction to Costello took place in a fictional 1969, after a movie’s eponymous protagonist went back in time 30 years and found himself dancing with Heather Graham to the music of Costello and Burt Bacharach.

If I had been as invested in music history then as I am now, I might have taken a deeper dive into Costello’s past and learned more about how this guy I’d scarcely heard of came to get a big cameo in a blockbuster movie. Of course, I didn’t, not until nearly 25 years after the release of “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” It definitely came as a surprise, then, that Costello didn’t spend his entire career singing mellow coffeehouse-style soft guitar tracks. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Which brings me back to his SNL stunt in 1977 and his subsequent ban from the show. In the years between 1977 and 1989, Costello released 12 albums, of which 11 charted at #50 or higher on the Billboard 200 Album chart in the U.S., and nine of them reaching the top 10 in the U.K. In the U.S., a bunch of Costello songs found their way to radio, though never at heights that pushed Costello and his band (at the time he played with The Attractions) to the forefront of the pop music zeitgeist.

Costello earned punk-rock cred in the U.K. and elsewhere with songs that straddled the lines between punk, ‘60s psychedelia, occasional soft rock, and what would later be called “new wave” the late ‘70s into the ‘80s. Songs like “Pump It Up,” the aforementioned “Radio Radio,” “Oliver’s Army,” “I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down,” and even the vastly more mellow “Good Year For The Roses” all became big hits in the U.K. and kept the embers burning with a solid underground following in the U.S.

With The Attractions, Costello finally made Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” in 1983 with “Everyday I Write The Book,” led by Bruce Thomas’s hypnotic bass line and evoking a sound that was part new wave, part Daryll Hall and John Oates (I personally get vibes of “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” and “Maneater” when I hear the song; probably just me). That song peaked at #36 on the Billboard Hot 100, Costello’s highest charting mainstream song to that point.

Of course, it also made it’s way on the “Wedding Singer” movie soundtrack in 1998, which prompted my wife to point out that connection to go along with her earlier astute observation about the Psychedelic Furs.

(Unbelievable, that “Wedding Singer” contains all those particular songs. It could mean that that movie inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance. Almost as if it were the temporal junction point for the entire space-time continuum. On the other hand, it could just be an amazing coincidence. But I digress…)

Costello and The Attractions hit the Hot 100 one more time before the two split ties in the mid ‘80s, getting to #56 in 1984 with “The Only Flame In Town.” Up to this point, you’d be forgiven for being unable to pin down a specific genre for Costello; to listen to “Flame,” you’d note the sax-driven opening and horn-inflected pseudo-reggae beat and think you were listening to a different band altogether. This shift away from the pure punk/new wave stylings of the ‘70s and early ‘80s would color the success of one of his first solo albums: 1989’s “Spike.”

And we are now 12 years beyond the original SNL moment and with the release of “Spike,” old broken fences were mended and Costello was invited back to SNL to debut the first single off of his new album: a somber but upbeat rock jam called “Veronica.”

In a collaboration with former Beatle Paul McCartney (who also lent his bass guitar stylings to this song), Costello wrote a touching lyrical homage to his grandmother, a woman who’d lived a long and fruitful life but was dealing with the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. Costello captures that essence in a subtle but heartbreaking opening verse:

Well, I used to know a girl and I could have sworn
That her name was Veronica
Oh well, she used to have a carefree mind of her own
And a delicate look in her eye
These days I'm afraid she's not even sure
If her name is Veronica

Listening to the song, you’re not really left with the sadness of an older relative in the final stages of their lives, but rather a bouncy upbeat introspection of what might be going on in that woman’s mind as she reflects on whatever moments she can remember from her life. I guess in that way it’s a nice pop-rock jam that celebrates the things that make someone great in their life rather than focus on the sadness of what they’ve become.

This combination of rock, sentimentality, Paul McCartney and mainstream pop sensibility rocketed “Veronica” to #1 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart for two weeks in March 1989, and ultimately became Costello’s first and only Hot 100 top 20 hit, peaking at #19 for the week ending June 24, 1989, buried behind zeitgeist-driving hits like “Satisfied” by Richard Marx, “Buffalo Stance” by Neneh Cherry (which hit a high-water mark of #3 on that chart) and peak Milli Vanilli.

Because it charted so high on the flagship pop chart, I would have expected to have some familiarity with “Veronica,” but it was a new one for me on first listen a few days ago. That said, I feel like it fit in well during that period of music, maybe not so much with the advent of new jack swing or the persistent success of pop acts like Paula Abdul or Madonna, but definitely with contemporaries like Marx, Fine Young Cannibals, Simply Red, Tom Petty and even the Traveling Wilburys.

“Veronica” would stick around the MRT charts for awhile, and a follow-up single off of “Spike” called “… This Town …” made it to #4 on the MRT. But “Veronica” typically appears at or near the top of greatest-hits lists of Elvis Costello and the myriad artists he’s worked with over a career that has spanned a half century. I’m inclined to agree; I really like this song on several levels, and appreciate how much he grew from his already talented beginnings in the punk-rock scene to a more singer-songwriter mold as he transitioned away from his early albums.

Unlike some of the other legacy acts I mentioned in my write-up on The Replacements, Elvis Costello’s work continued far beyond the late ‘80s. Indeed, his cameo in “Austin Powers” and another amazing SNL appearance in the late ‘90s spoke to his longevity, and while he only has one more chart topper to speak of in terms of the Modern Rock Tracks chart, I suspect I’ll have just as much to say then about the last 30 years of his career as I did recapping the first 20 years here.

Rating: 8/10

Chart notes: Much like last week, the top songs on the MRT chart during Costello’s two-week run at #1 were either previous #1 songs or songs that will eventually become #1. But I found a couple of tracks that peaked in the top 10.

• "Come Out Fighting" by Easterhouse: It’s a decent adult alternative rock song. The best way I can describe it is that it has a Bruce Springsteen vibe, with strong guitar-driven choruses backed by finger-snapping, rhythm-guitar-led verses intended to promote and glorify standing up for something one believes in, even when backed into what feels like an impossible corner. It peaked at #7 behind “Veronica.”

• “Dizzy” by Throwing Muses: Rhode Island-based Throwing Muses, a female-led alt rock band, peaked at #8 behind “Veronica” with what would be their highest-charting single. It’s got a great sound, typical of the jangle-pop-rock mix made famous by bands like R.E.M., and it’s easy to hear why this would have gotten a fair amount of radio play during this period. Throwing Muses disbanded in the mid 1990s and had a couple of minor hits during their run.

• Additional note: I would be remiss if I didn’t reference Chris Molanphy’s terrific podcast “Hit Parade” and the recent episode he produced called “Angry Young Men Edition” that references Elvis Costello’s evolution from punk to new wave. Molanphy’s podcast is one of the inspirations for this Substack, so I try to highlight his work when it’s relevant to the article, especially when he can compose a far more compelling historical narrative than I can. The podcast is available here: