The song was written in a New York City hotel room in the first few days of 1984. It was recorded in March 1984 at Island Records' Fallout Shelter, with producer John Porter. It is incorrectly credited on the 7" single as having been recorded at Matrix Studios in London in February 1984 (it may have still been rehearsed there, perhaps even demoed).

single version {3:34}

• "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" single, all formats except for very first UK 12"

• "Hatful Of Hollow" album

• Tokuma Japan edition of the "The Smiths" debut album

• "Louder Than Bombs" album

• Australia "The World Won't Listen" double LP and double cassette

• "Best...II" album

• "The Complete Picture" (video)

• "Singles" album

• "The Very Best Of The Smiths" [remastered 2001]

• "The Sound Of The Smiths" [remastered 2008]

longer version (not meant to be released) {3:56}

• very first UK "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" 12" single (mopre info in this single's collectors appendix)

Earsay 31 March 1984 [tv] {3:20}

This short film set to an early mix of the then unreleased song (shown alongside Sandie Shaw doing the Smiths' "Hand In Glove") is circulated on video bootlegs. The audio is commonly found in good quality on various manufactured bootlegs as well as in digital format on the internet.

Top Of The Pops 31 May 1984 [tv]

• "The Complete Picture" video compilation

The above compilation has the single version of the song dubbed over the original footage. The original video with original audio may be available on video bootlegs (to be confirmed), but then since the band lipsynched, this audio would still be the studio version of the song with the cheering audience noise over it.

Top Of The Pops 14 June 1984 [tv]

This second TOTP appearance for "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" is easily found on video bootlegs. The performance is lipsynched so the audio is the original single version of the song.

This song has been performed live 111 times by the Smiths, perhaps up to 116 times when taking into account the number of unknown setlists from the early Smiths days. This puts it among the top five most played songs by the band. It was done 58 times, perhaps even up to 63 times in 1984, on the tours promoting the debut album and "Hatful Of Hollow". It was performed almost as assiduously on the 1985 Meat Is Murder tour (including the few 'loose' dates from early 1986), with only a few brief breaks here and there, for a total of 42 airings. It was on the setlist on-and-off at the beginning of the 1986 tour promoting the album "The Queen Is Dead", for a total of 11 performances that year.

There are no officially released live recordings of the song at this point in time.

No demos or studio outtakes of this song have leaked to the general public at this point in time.

Quotes

"... we went to America to play Danceteria on New Year's Eve and Mike got ill so we couldn't do the rest of the gigs, and 'Heaven Knows' was written in a hotel room while me and Morrissey were waiting to go home. (...) I don't really like 'Heaven Knows'. Well, I like it but less than the others. I don't like the tune and the backing track. I don't like the rhythm or anything."
- Johnny Marr, Select, December 1993