It was written by Blondie bass player Gary Valentine for his then-girlfriend, the actress and journalist Lisa Jane Persky, before his departure from the band.

[3] More seriously, in New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation Valentine wrote: "During the Iggy [Pop] tour we discovered we were having the same kind of dreams or found we were thinking of each other at the same time.

One of the single's B-side tracks was "Detroit 442", and the other was Jimmy Destri's "Poets Problem", which was not on the original release of Plastic Letters.

Stewart Mason of AllMusic wrote, "It's one of the group's early highlights, a sweet little power pop love song that features a brilliantly starry-eyed lyric set to an addictive jangly guitar riff.

The missing link between Big Star's #1 Record and the dB's Stands for Decibels, '(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear' pulls off the difficult trick of being dryly ironic and utterly sincere at the same moment.

'"[9] The Daily Telegraph ranked it as one of the band's ten best songs, praising Harry's "glacial" vocals and describing the melody as "so insistent, you might need an exorcist to get it out of your head.

"[10] New Times Broward-Palm Beach named the song as one of Blondie's five most underrated, noting, "Harry made its sweet ode to infatuation convincing.