Touch Me I'm Sick

Mudhoney recorded the song on 15 and 21 April 1988 at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle with Jack Endino, and Sub Pop released it on 1 August as a seven-inch with Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More on the other side. Arm said the idea came from Bruce Pavitt, who told him he sang about dogs and about being sick and had a shtick. Endino said he was surprised how noisy the sessions were and mostly stood back. The sound came from an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff plus a second guitar adding more distortion. Turner described the riff as The Yardbirds' Happenings Ten Years Time Ago by way of The Stooges' Sick of You.

The first pressing was 800 copies in clear coffee-brown vinyl, with 200 in black vinyl and a few in assorted other colors. Arm had first dismissed it as a B-side toss off, but it became a hit on college radio, and Pavitt said people across America started raving about it. Pitchfork's Marc Masters called it a brain-shaking single and a definite indie rock hit. It was not on the original 1988 Superfuzz Bigmuff EP; it was added to the 1990 reissue Superfuzz Bigmuff Plus Early Singles and later collected on the compilation March to Fuzz in 2000. NME ranked it 99 in its 2002 list of the 100 greatest singles. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame asked for the original lyric sheet, and when none existed the band gave Turner's old Big Muff pedals.

Arm has said the band has not tired of playing it live, because, as he put it, it is only two minutes long. Sonic Youth proposed a split single in which each covered the other, so Mudhoney recorded Sonic Youth's Halloween and Sonic Youth did this song, with Kim Gordon singing. The single came out in December 1988.