really feel mentally impoverished." In the song's lyrics, Morrissey referenced works by playwright Shelagh Delaney, whom he would reference in several later songs. The song's line "I'll probably never see you again" appears in Delaney's kitchen sink realism play A Taste of Honey and The Lion in Love. Morrissey paraphrased the line "Everything depends upon how near you stand next to me" from the 1974 Leonard Cohen song "Take This Longing". Goddard conjectures that the song's title was inspired by the 1947 detective novel Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh. The lyrics are also quoted in the coda of "Pretty Girls Make Graves", another song from the band's first album. Release and reception "Hand in Glove" was released as the Smiths' debut recording in May 1983. The single sold consistently for the next 18 months. Although the single failed to reach the UK Singles Chart, it reached number three on the UK Indie Chart. Its relative success earned the group a listing in the Guinness Book of Records in January 1984 when it and the group's next two singles' "This Charming Man" and "What Difference Does It Make?"' held the top three position on the UK Indie Chart. "It should have been a massive hit", Morrissey later said, "it was so urgent. To me, it was a complete cry in every direction. It really was a landmark." The single did raise the band's profile; a week after its release the band gained its first major live reviews in the music press, which in turn led to their first radio session with BBC Radio 1 disc jockey John Peel. While reviewing a 1983 concert by the Smiths and the Go-Betweens at The Venue in London, Barney Hoskyns, writing for the NME, described "Hand in Glove" as "one of the year's few masterpieces, a thing of beauty and a joy forever". In the 1984 edition of The Rock Yearbook, Hoskyns said the song "swept into my heart". Bill Black, writing for Sounds, described it as a "daunting" debut. Writing for Allmusic, Ned Raggett called the song a "stunning, surprising debut" and describes the music as "sparkling," highlighting Marr's "careful overdubbing of acoustic and electric guitars". He also described Rourke's bass and Joyce's drumming as "sparse but effective", and said that Joyce "especially shone". Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior editor for Allmusic, said "Hand in Glove"'s lyrics contain "veiled references to homosexuality". Noel Gallagher