song may upset American audiences. Partridge recalled: "I reluctantly agreed because I thought I hadn't written a strong enough take on religion. I thought I'd kind of failed." Rundgren had a different recollection, and said that Partridge demanded that the song be pulled because "He was afraid that there would be repercussions personally for him for taking on such a thorny subject... I called them and said, 'This is a mistake.'" Partridge denied such accusations: "if you can't have a different opinion without them [people upset by the song] wanting to firebomb your house then that's their problem." "Dear God" was ultimately released as the B-side to the UK lead single "Grass", but due to its popularity with American DJs, the album was reissued in the US, with "Mermaid Smiled" removed and "Dear God" cross-faded into the following track, "Dying", giving the second edition of the US album a revised track sequence. Partridge commented: "I got backed into a corner on that. They said that we had to take something off to put this one on 'cause of the limitations of vinyl and such. I think I wanted to take off 'Dying' and part of me said no, lyrically it's very honest and good, and so 'Dying' stayed." In June 1987, the A-sided "Dear God" single was released in both markets, reaching No. 99 in the UK, and No. 37 in the US Mainstream Rock chart. Some controversy broke out over the song's anti-religious lyrics, which inspired some violent incidents. In Florida, a radio station received a bomb threat, and in New York, a student forced their school to play the song over its public-address system by holding a faculty member at knife-point. Nonetheless, the commercial success of "Dear God" propelled Skylarking to sell more than 250,000 units, and it raised the band's profile among American college youth. In the US, the album spent 29 weeks on the Billboard 200 album charts and reached its peak position of No. 70 in June 1987. Polarity issue On the request of XTC and Virgin Records, Rundgren submitted three different mixdowns of the album before quitting the project. The first mix was believed to be lacking in dynamics, while the second was rejected for containing numerous pops, clicks, and digital dropouts. According to Partridge, both the label and the band were dissatisfied with the final mix; "We all thought [it was] poor and