Only Shallow

The first track on Loveless was written by Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher and opens with a four-count on the snare from Colm Ó Cíosóig, who played live drums on it. The main riff is four barre chords in a modal tuning, played with the tremolo arm in the glide guitar style and run through a Yamaha SPX 90. Shields told Guitar World in 1992 that the wordless refrain came from two amplifiers facing each other, each with its tremolo set to a different rate and a microphone between them. He overdubbed that, then reversed it and played it backwards into a sampler.

The vocals were recorded at Britannia Row and Protocol in May and June 1991, the first time Butcher took part in the album sessions. Shields and Ó Cíosóig mixed the song with the engineer Dick Meaney at The Church in Crouch End in the autumn of 1991. Sire released a promotional single in December 1991 with a radio edit and the album version. Three months later it reached number 27 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, the band's only American chart entry. A retail single appeared in France in March 1992 and was given away with an issue of Les Inrockuptibles, with Sugar and an Isn't Anything outtake called Instrumental on the B-side. Angus Cameron directed the video, which mixes performance footage with close-ups of Butcher singing.

Stewart Mason of AllMusic called it "a breathtaking start to a near-perfect album".