Cruel

The song is sung from the point of view of a self-described liberal man who tries to square his feminist beliefs with his romantic ache and his urge to offer old-fashioned love lines. The singer compares his lament to the blues and plays sarcastically on that genre's reputation for sincerity. The music is a soft jazz shuffle of brushes and vibes. The band were unhappy with the recording but had neither the time nor the budget to redo it.

Radio 1's Kid Jensen played it on 9 January 1984, and the band performed it on Channel 4's The Tube in March 1984. Elvis Costello covered it on his 1984 American tour and praised the song's account of the perils of expressing a male desire that is not oppressive. It was the only Swoon song played on the 1990 tour and the only one on the 1992 compilation A Life of Surprises. Pitchfork's Sam Sodomsky singled it out, with Elegance, as an example of McAloon writing about heartbreak and adulthood.