another tape". Impressed, Travis promised he would. The following Monday, Travis called the group and invited them back to London to release "Hand in Glove" as a single. Both parties agreed to release the single as a temporary arrangement before agreeing to any long-term partnership. Two months after the single's release, the Smiths recorded the song again during aborted sessions for their debut album with producer Troy Tate. This version was recorded a tone lower than the original in the key of F# minor, and features a shorter introduction. The Smiths recorded the song again with producer John Porter in October at Manchester's Pluto Studios. Morrissey rejected this version of the song. Due to impending deadlines, the version that ultimately appeared on the band's first album The Smiths was a remix of the original master recording from the Strawberry Studios session. For this version, Porter increased the separation between Marr's guitar tracks and Morrissey's vocals, emphasised drummer Mike Joyce's drum beat, pushed Rourke's bass back in the mix, and created a more dramatic opening and conclusion to the song. Composition and lyrics The original recorded version of "Hand in Glove" is in the key of G minor. The song begins with an overdub of Marr playing a harmonica over the rest of the music. Simon Goddard wrote that Marr's use of the instrument "purposefully evoked the very same 'blunt vitality of working-class "northernness" that Ian McDonald attributes to The Beatles' parallel 1962 single 'Love Me Do', though infinitely more melancholy." Of the backing music, Goddard wrote, "Marr's redolent minor chord wash weeps with a rain-soaked hopelessness while Rourke contributes one of his most inspired bass patterns". Morrissey explained that the song's theme was "complete loneliness," going on to state: "It was important to me that that there'd be something searingly poetic about it, in a lyrical sense, and yet jubilant at the same time." Goddard described "Hand in Glove" as "a bleak proclamation of doomed happiness [. . .] a shattering left-hook of self-loathing, loss and desperation". Years later Morrissey considered the song to be the group's "most special." The singer said he was particularly proud of the song's second verse, which included the lines "Though we may be hidden by rags/We have something they'll never have." Morrissey explained that the verse described "how I felt when I couldn't afford clothes and used to dress in rags but I didn't