The Perfect Kiss

The Perfect Kiss was recorded at Britannia Row Studios in London and issued as a single by Factory Records in May 1985. Its lyrics touch on love and death. Sumner told GQ he did not have a clue what the song was about, and that its lyrics came about after a visit to a man's house in the United States, where the host showed guns kept under his bed before the group went out. He said it was written, recorded and mixed quickly, without sleep, before the band left for a tour of Australia.

The official video is an 11-minute live performance filmed by Jonathan Demme in 1985. Billboard wrote in 2017 that it might be the band's most arresting visual, noting that Hook swaps his bass for sticks to play the drum-pad blasts on the bridge. Pitchfork's Tom Ewing wrote that the long 12-inch mix has some claim to be the decade's greatest 12-inch edit, with interlocking bass and keyboard hooks, handclap drums and five or six different climaxes.