False modesty has always suited Morrissey. Again and again, this charming man makes us believe he's as undesirable as we-- in clammy moments of relapsing adolescence-- fear we truly are. Dapper as ever in tux on the cover of this single, he moans, "If you don't want me/ You don't have to have me" over chase-scene acoustic guitars like those on Vauxhall's "Why Don't You Find Out for Yourself". Typical Moz: "If You Don't Like Me, Don't Look at Me" is as good as several tracks on its corresponding album.

On another level, though, it's "Moz to crits: Piss off!" If Ringleader of the Tormentors lacked the vitriol of You Are the Quarry, here the bile turns into a stylized, wordless prechorus, and a young man runs down the rushing glen. "See if I care," Morrissey stammers, of course a bit too much. The mariachi horns of "I Just Want to See the Boy Happy" return for the crashing finale, and I can't begin to parse why he sings of "somebody else who can take your gaze a ways" (not "away"). Professions of apathy aside, though, the man who once sang, "Me, without clothes?/ Well, a nation turns its back and gags" remains dashingly unrequited: "I just thought you might feel the same, that's all."