Song takes Acko 30 years to finish

“THIS song took me 30 years to finish,” begins Tallaght-born singer-songwriter Acko Atkinson, regarding his penultimate single of this year, ‘The Heart That Cries Wolf’.

This is single number eleven of the twelve singles Acko is releasing in 2025 from his upcoming album, which releases in 2026.

He remarks, “I wrote the chord sequence some time around 1994/95,” showing that this latest song has been in the works for three decades.

He states that it took him 10 years to come up with a vocal melody and lyrics: “I recorded it a couple of different ways until I settled on a simple piano and vocal version.”

As Acko cannot play piano, he programmed a “really bad one” and left it for 20 years. When it came to deciding what songs to put out as singles this year, ‘The Heart That Cries Wolf’ was one of the first ones he thought of.

Acko is a member of an online recording and mixing group (Home Studio Corner) that has a collaboration resource, so he asked two of the other members to help him out.

Keith Ericksen played “some beautiful piano”, and Gary Dugan provided the string parts, according to Acko.

The B-side, ‘Since You Went Away’, is another Beatle-esque tribute to his late daughter Sita, following Acko’s earlier single this year, ‘Chocolate Full of Lies’, and the B-side of ‘That Spark’, ‘Forever Never’.

‘The Heart That Cries Wolf’ will be available on Bandcamp and other streaming platforms starting November 7.

For more information, get in contact with Acko at stdominics@outlook.ie