Eight things I learned from Wikipedia:

1. "How Soon Is Now?" is a song by the British alternative rock band The Smiths. Written by Smiths singer Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr, it was originally a B-side of the 1984 single "William, It Was Really Nothing".

2. Sire Records chief Seymour Stein called it "the 'Stairway to Heaven' of the Eighties", while co-writer Johnny Marr described it as "possibly our most enduring record. It's most people's favourite, I think."

3. Although a club favourite, "How Soon Is Now?" did not chart as well as expected. Most commentators put this down to the fact that the song had been out on vinyl in a number of forms before being released as a single in it own right.

4. Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr wrote "How Soon Is Now?" along with the songs "William, It Was Really Nothing" and "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" during a four-day period in June 1984.

5. While recording, Marr created the oscillating guitar effect that plays throughout the track, a rhythm that has been compared to the song "Mona" originally recorded by Bo Diddley and subsequently by The Rolling Stones. After a break, Marr and Porter added a few overdubs, including a slide guitar part that "gave [the song] real tension".

6. The song contains only one verse which is repeated twice, plus a chorus and a bridge. The subject is an individual who cannot find a way to overcome his crippling shyness and find a partner. Two couplets from the song are well known in pop culture, the opening to the verse:

“I am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar

I am the son and heir, of nothing in particular”

and the chorus:

“I am human and I need to be loved

Just like everybody else does.”

The opening was adapted from a line in George Eliot's novel Middlemarch: "To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular".

7. The tune is built around a guitar chord that rapidly oscillates in volume. As to how the distinctive resonant sound was achieved, Marr gave the following account to Guitar Player magazine in 1990:

The vibrato sound is fucking incredible, and it took a long time. I put down the rhythm track on an Epiphone Casino through a Fender Twin Reverb without vibrato. Then we played the track back through four old Twins, one on each side. We had to keep all the amps vibrating in time to the track and each other, so we had to keep stopping and starting the track, recording it in 10-second bursts... I wish I could remember exactly how we did the slide part -- not writing it down is one of the banes of my life! We did it in three passes through a harmonizer, set to some weird interval, like a sixth. There was a different harmonization for each pass. For the line in harmonics, I retuned the guitar so that I could play it all at the 12th fret with natural harmonics. It's doubled several times.

8. "How Soon Is Now?" was considered a "major problem" to play in concert by the Smiths, and live versions by the Smiths are relatively rare.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Soon_Is_Now

Marr found t.A.T.u.'s version "just silly", but Morrissey viewed it much more favorably:

Interviewer: Did you hear t.A.T.u's version of 'How Soon Is Now'?

Morrissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know much about them.

Interviewer: They're the teenage Russian lesbians.

Morrissey: Well, aren't we all?

True story: I thought Morrissey was singing "I am the sun and air" not "I am the son and heir".