Uncertain Smile

There are two versions. The October 1982 single, produced by Mike Thorne at Mediasound in New York, has Johnson on vocals and a Fender Precision bassline, a Roland TR-808, a 12-string Rickenbacker, a xylimba intro, Crispin Cioe of the Uptown Horns on saxophone and flute, and Thorne's Synclavier string samples; the 7-inch runs 4:55 and the 12-inch about ten minutes. It reached 68 in the UK, the first charting single, and Johnson called it the most commercial thing he'd ever done. It was reworked from the 1981 single "Cold Spell Ahead", after Some Bizzare's Stevo Pearce pushed him to make it a single. The re-recording on Soul Mining, produced by Paul Hardiman and Johnson, runs 6:49 or 6:52 depending on the page, and replaces the saxophone solo with a piano solo by Jools Holland; it was re-released in November 1983.

Johnson told The Quietus the solo was recorded in one take on a Yamaha C3 grand he still owns, and that it had to happen, the cherry on the cake; Songfacts, citing Uncut, says Holland did one run-through and a drop-in near the end. Songfacts calls the song a late-night brooder about unrequited love, which is its description, not Johnson's. Contemporary press for the single included Smash Hits, Noise and Sounds. Triple J's Hottest 100 placed it third in 1989, fourth in 1990 and thirteenth in 1991. At the Royal Albert Hall on June 5, 2018 it was in the second encore, 23rd of 24 songs. We could not tell whether our upload is the single or the album version.