“What Difference Does It Make?” by The Smiths

"What Difference Does It Make?" was the Smiths' third single and one of the songs on their self-titled 1984 debut, and it's where the Morrissey and Marr partnership started to hit home with the public: it became one of their first real hits, reaching number 12 in the UK. Johnny Marr wrote the music and Morrissey the words.

Marr's guitar does the heavy lifting, a bright, driving riff that chimes and churns at once, while Andy Rourke's bass runs nimble circles and Mike Joyce keeps the beat rattling forward. Morrissey swoons and sulks over the top in that mournful croon of his, sounding wounded and faintly amused about it. John Porter produced, with Phil Bush and Neill King engineering, and the result has a clean, jangling urgency.

There's a second take worth hunting down, too: a version cut for John Peel's show on BBC Radio 1 turned up on Hatful of Hollow the same year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.