Kayleigh

The first single from Misplaced Childhood, it set Fish's words to music by Kelly, Mosley, Rothery and Trewavas. Rothery found the guitar hook while showing his girlfriend what chorus and delay could do. At Hansa the band tracked it live together in a large hall, on headphones, and Rothery played the solo live. Fish finished the words mid-session, and the vocal was cut that night, although the others first thought the name too personal. The single trims 27 seconds from the album's guitar solo.

Fish described it as an apology to past girlfriends, a catalogue of his inability to keep a relationship going. The name came from a former girlfriend, Kay, and the lyric refers to Galashiels and Cambridge. It reached two in Britain, kept from the top by The Crowd's Bradford fire charity single, and made the American Hot 100. It made Kayleigh a common girls' name in Britain, and Fish said he grew used to signing autographs for young Kayleighs. Mark Kelly said in 2013 that the song had let him earn a living from music.

Live

setlist.fm logs more than 700 Marillion performances, from November 1984 into 2026, and the Hogarth line-up often pairs it with Lavender. Fish has sung it nearly 400 times on his own, including at the Nelson Mandela 70th birthday tribute at Wembley in 1988, with Midge Ure and Phil Collins. The upload in the hypersongs web is the 1985 promo video, shot in West Berlin with Tamara Nowy, who later married Fish, and the boy from the album sleeve.