Songfacts®:

• This song tells the story of an old lady who lives in a nursing home. She lives a quiet and still existence as she gradually loses her memory. It was inspired by Costello's grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
• Paul McCartney wrote this with Costello. The lyrics are reminiscent of McCartney's Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby."
  
  This was the first song to come from McCartney and Costello's co-writing relationship. Other songs the duo wrote include Costello's tracks "So Like Candy" and "Playboy to A Man," and McCartney's "My Brave Face" and "You Want Her Too."
  
  Hard to believe, but McCartney was getting a lot of bad press around this time, as he was still feuding with his former Beatles associates and refused to attend The Beatles 1988 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Costello said in a 1989 interview with On The Street: "I know some people have very bad preconceptions about Paul McCartney, but I'm involved to the extent that I've written a bunch of songs with him as well. I know he's a really good bass player, so I'm not too bothered about what anyone thinks about him playing on my record. I don't think it reflects at all on my perception of myself as a songwriter."
• "Veronica" was Costello's first big hit in the United States. Seems Elvis prefers niche adulation to widespread commercial success, which might account for his lack of chart success. This song, in particular, is one he struggled with. He explained to NME in 1996: "As soon as you make a record, particularly if it becomes a big success, it doesn't belong to you any more, it's that 'Wah Boo!' situation. A similar thing happened with 'Veronica' in America. I never liked it. And recently I did this show with Steve (Nieve, Attraction's keyboardist), and I changed the key and the whole song changed completely. Suddenly I didn't have to think about the record. It went back to why I wrote it, how I wrote it about my grandmother and it really meant something to me, and I kind of regained it. I'd got my song back from the evil success that it had had."
• Elvis Costello recalled the story of the song in his 2015 memoir Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink:
  
  "When I'd got the call to say Paul wanted me to write some songs with him for his next record, I didn't know what to expect, but as his last co-written hit had been with Michael Jackson, I wondered whether I should be taking some dancing lessons. I'd brought an early draft of 'Veronica' that you would have recognized, but we immediately got to work putting a better flow into the chorus and shifting the bridge into making that part of the song seem more like a dream."
• Costello produced the song with Kevin Killen and T Bone Burnett, who also played acoustic guitar on the track. Roger McGuinn of Byrds fame played a Rickenbacker bass guitar, and Benmont Tench of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers played the spinet, which is a harpsichord-like instrument, and also piano. The other musicians are:
  
  Mitchell Froom: chamberlain strings, electric piano
  Michael Blair: drums, glockenspiel
  Costello: electric guitar
  Jerry Marotta: snare drums
• Costello sang this, along with "Let Him Dangle," on the March 25, 1989 episode of Saturday Night Live. The appearance marked the singer's return to the SNL stage after being banned for more than a decade over his impromptu performance of "Radio Radio" on December 17, 1977.
• The music video takes place in a nursing home and starts with a heartfelt spoken introduction by Costello, who says:
  
  "I remember her in this place. Sometimes she was happy. She's say, 'so and so said such and such' and she'd talk about who knows what. One minute you'd be here and the next minute it would be 40 years later. So you'd just sit there and bounce around the years with her."
  
  The video got a lot of airplay on MTV and won the Video Music Award for Best Male Video.
• Britt Daniel of Spoon performed a karaoke rendition of this on the teen detective series Veronica Mars in the 2006 episode "Rashard And Wallace Go To White Castle."