"Saint Veronika" is the third official single by Billy Talent from their fourth album, ''

Billy Talent III ''Billy Talent III'' is the third studio album by Canadian rock band Billy Talent. It was released on July 10, 2009, in Europe, July 13 in the United Kingdom, July 14 in Canada, and September 22 in the US. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Canad ...

''.

Music video

The music video premiered on February 1, 2010 on MySpace, and was directed by Michael Maxxis. The video starts with a family of dolls sitting down at dinner when the father gets angry at his daughter (likely Veronika); she flees the room, over to a shelf and grabs a couple of tools. The story is intercut with scenes of Billy Talent playing this song in a shed while other dolls' wheels are spinning thread. The girl leaves the house, jumps over a fence and unwittingly gets one of her threads stuck on a nail. Suddenly the other dolls try to chase her, possibly trying to convince her to come back. When they get to the fence they notice that her thread is stuck on the fence, and give up. The girl keeps running, not noticing the thread caught on the fence is slowly unraveling her and leading to her demise, and at the end of the video she collapses with barely any of her body left.

Track listing

CD single

# "Saint Veronika" - 4:09 # "Line & Sinker" (live at the

Horseshoe Tavern The Horseshoe Tavern (known as ''The Horseshoe'', ''The 'Shoe'', The 'Toronto Tavern' and The 'Triple T' to Toronto locals) is a concert venue at 370 Queen Street West (northeast corner of Queen at Spadina) in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and ...

) - 4:06 # "Saint Veronika" (music video)- 4:18

Cultural reference

The song was based on the novel '' Veronika Decides to Die'' by

Paulo Coelho Paulo Coelho de Souza (, ; born 24 August 1947) is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002. His novel ''The Alchemist'' became an international best-seller and he has published 28 more book ...

. According to vocalist Ben Kowalewicz, ''

The Alchemist An alchemist is a person who practices alchemy. Alchemist or Alchemyst may also refer to: Books and stories * ''The Alchemist'' (novel), the translated title of a 1988 allegorical novel by Paulo Coelho * ''The Alchemist'' (play), a play by Be ...

'', another of Coelho's books, is the band's "bible"."Saint Veronika" Songfacts
/ref>

Live Performances

Billy Talent performed the song at the

2010 Juno Awards The Juno Awards of 2010 honoured music industry achievements in Canada for the latter part of 2008 and for most of 2009. These ceremonies were in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada during the weekend ending 18 April 2010. Primary cerem ...

in St. John's.

Charts

Certifications

References

{{Authority control 2010 singles Billy Talent songs Songs written by Ian D'Sa Songs written by Benjamin Kowalewicz Songs written by Jonathan Gallant Songs written by Aaron Solowoniuk Songs about suicide Song recordings produced by Brendan O'Brien (record producer) 2009 songs Music based on novels Adaptations of works by Paulo Coelho