MacD on Music: Better than revenge

Failed relationships have been a source of inspiration for songwriters since the beginning of time (see: ‘Rumours’ by Fleetwood Mac, ‘‘97 Bonnie & Clyde’ by Eminem and the entirety of Adele’s catalogue).

Over the past year, Cora Harkin has been releasing her own contributions to this fine subsection of music. Next week (April 19th) Cora will release her fourth single ‘Your Sweet Veronica’ and this week (April 13th) will be playing the Nerve Centre in a special acoustic gig with Kyle O’Neill of Boy M5.

I caught up with Cora to discuss the origins of the song and the gig: “I wrote it about this dude that I dated and he started talking to his ex again. I’m kind of like ‘What the hell? Why are you talking with your ex again?’.

He claims they’re just friends and not to worry about it and then by the time I messaged him that I’m uncomfortable with this he broke up with me. Later on, I found out that he had been calling that ex every single night. He’d been hanging out with her when he went back to his home town and overall just being very disrespectful within the relationship.”

“‘Your Sweet Veronica’ is a story about going with someone and they’re still hung up on their ex and you’re kind of a rebound for them. Her name is not Veronica. I’m not going to disclose her name just for her own privacy reasons. It was called ‘Your Sweet [REDACTED]’ and then I was like ‘it’s not really her fault’.

“She suspected that we were going together. She messaged him and in front of my eyes he said to her ‘I’m not seeing anyone’. Then again, it’s not really her fault so I don’t want to publicly call out ‘Your Sweet [REDACTED]’.

Instead, I had written this song with one of my friends. It was this storyline about this guy called Johnny and this girl called Ronnie and when we were writing this I took reference of Veronica Sawyer from ‘Heathers’ and I wrote ‘Oh, sweet Veronica was under the swing and she was looking up, stargazing’. While writing that I thought another character I’d written through songs is sweet Veronica so [REDACTED], Veronica, same amount of syllables so I decided to name it ‘Your Sweet Veronica’.”

“This is my fourth single. I got three songs out of one relationship. This dude was that bad I could write an album about him. The cover art for the song was done by one of my close friends Lia Silina. Amazing photographer. We went out, we had a wee day, we had coffee and all and then we went and had a photo shoot. Literally everywhere in Derry we went and took photos.”

“I think ‘Your Sweet Veronica’, apart from ‘Back Of My Mind’, is probably the most soulful song I have. It means a lot more and you can tell by listening to it that it has meaning. Whereas ‘Glad I Got Away’ was pretty ages after it happened by the time we got to record it. There was passion, obviously, but ‘Your Sweet Veronica’ the passion is ramped up so much.

“I wrote it back in July on my bedroom floor and I was like ‘this is my new favourite song’. I write songs quite often. I songwrite more than I do anything else. Not every song I write is good and not every song is finished but I was like ‘this is the song. This is the one’.”

Next, we spoke about Zac Mac, who will be supporting Cora at the gig, as well as the significance of the gig itself: “He’s an amazing guitarist. He’s a genius. I think he was the youngest person ever to do his grade eight exam. He’s really, really good. We had booked the headline because we had planned on releasing an EP instead of a single based around ‘Your Sweet Veronica’. We booked the headline gig the day that Paul Mooney [bass player for Boy M5] died.

“He was in the group chat at about one o’clock and said he would be available for a gig and then that night he had passed. After that we were conflicted. He would’ve mixed the EP and we decided that, in honour of Paul, he would’ve wanted us to go on with it.”

And that’s it from Cora. Her new single ‘Your Sweet Veronica’ will be released on April 19th and she will be playing the Nerve Centre this Saturday (April 13th) with support from Kyle O’Neill of Boy M5 and Zac Mac.

Cora can be found on Instagram and TikTok @coraharkinmusic (for both).