I Will Dare

Westerberg wrote it soon after Hootenanny was finished. Peter Jesperson remembered a call in which Westerberg said he had just written the best song of his life and wanted to record it at once, but the record was already done. Westerberg called it an answer to U2's I Will Follow and a kind of love song, and said the title suited the band, who would dare to flop and dare to do anything. It rides a shuffle rhythm with Westerberg on mandolin. Peter Buck of R.E.M. plays the solo, because Bob Stinson could not come up with one himself.

Twin/Tone issued it as a single in July 1984, ahead of the album in October. It reached no national chart but was a college radio hit, climbing to number one on 55 college stations. The B-sides were covers of T. Rex's 20th Century Boy and Hank Williams's Hey Good Lookin', the second recorded at a club show in Madison, Wisconsin. AllMusic calls it "perhaps the band's most beloved song." Ultimate Classic Rock ranked it the best Replacements song, PopMatters fifth and Diffuser.fm ninth, and it is among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

Live

A 1986 live version, recorded at Maxwell's in Hoboken, is on For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986.