Makes No Sense at All

Mould wrote it, Mould and Hart produced, and it was released in August 1985 as SST 051. The B-side was a cover of "Love Is All Around", the theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which SPIN says came from a joke that began as an encore in Minneapolis; videos exist for both sides, the B-side clip recreating the show's opening scenes at Dayton's, the escalator and the IDS Center. It was the band's first video and first song with significant album-oriented rock airplay. Per Wikipedia, Mould said it sums up all the aspirations he had as a songwriter at that point, a super simple song he still plays nightly, the one the band would play if they had seven minutes before the missiles fell; we could not locate the original interview.

Medialoper's Jim Connelly describes the chorus first, an opening drum lick from Hart, Hart's harmonies on the title and a roughly two-second Hart snare roll after each verse, calling it the band's pure pop pinnacle. AllMusic's Mark Deming called it perhaps the group's greatest fusion of punk and pop, Rolling Stone's Rob Tannenbaum said it could almost be termed catchy, and Trouser Press named it one of 1985's best 45s. It reached 2 on the UK indie chart. A live version, from the January 30, 1985 show at First Avenue, was released on the 2025 EP. We found no video director and no per-song setlist count.