Something I think you didn't know - Roxette had four number one hits in the United States - which is one more than they had in their home country, Sweden.
This song, from 1988's Look Sharp album, was their first in the US (it did not reach #1 in Sweden - the only song, in fact, to top both the US and Swedish charts by the band was "Joyride", which, despite my prior attempt at humour, was not only a minor hit - ironically both their last US #1 and their first Swedish one).
Dual vocalist/guitarists Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson played togeher from the mid 1980s until 2019, when Fredriksson passed away from complications from a brain tumor. Gessle wrote this song as an exercise when he got a new synthesizer and was learning how to operate it. It's an oddly consructed song, with weird chord progressions that no one reading this blog is going to hear about from me.
I loved this song from first listen, and yes, I have the 12" single of the song around here somewhere.
As I stated earlier, the band performed together for a long time - until a few years before Marie's death. This performance is from 2009 - with less epic hair, but just as epic performance.
The band rerecorded the song in 2015, as part of an advertising campaign - with a new mix and new vocals. It would be a Swedish Top 40 hit.
It's a different song - far more focused on electronic music and tuned to the slightly reduced vocal ranges of Fredriksson and Gisele. It wasn't the last thing Fredriksson would record (they released another album in 2016) but it's one of the last, and that makes it somewhat sad.
Marie toured with Roxette and announced that she could not any longer in 2016. You can see her still performing her heart out, even sitting down, in 2015, which was one of her last live performances.
Per Gessle briefly reuinted the band in tribute to Marie under the name PG Roxette. They did a tribute show for her and of course included this song - with him singing some of her part and other background singers picking up the rest.
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