This year, Swedish group Roxette celebrates the 30 th Anniversary of their third album “Joyride”, following the band’s spectacular global breakthrough with “Look Sharp!” in 1989. Three US #1 singles - “The Look”, “Listen To Your Heart” and “It Must Have Been Love” - and other big hits like “Dressed For Success” and “Dangerous” had rapidly made the Roxette duo Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle a world-wide hit
phenomenon.
”Joyride” was the album that was supposed to cement Roxette’s new-found status as a global hit-makers. Which indeed it did. On May 1, the title track zoomed all the way up to #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart – setting a record no Scandinavian group or artist has yet been able to break, helping to make “Joyride” a 11+ million seller.
This autumn the 30 th Anniversary of ”Joyride” will be celebrated with the release of a 4-album vinyl and a 3-CD box, containing the original release as well as previously unreleased or hard-to-get material, that paints a fuller picture of a unique time in pop history. A richly illustrated 32 page booklet tells the story. Twelve of the songs are previously unreleased, among them the first recording of ”Hotblooded”, which originally was meant to be the album’s opening track until ”Joyride” knocked it down a notch, giving the album and the upcoming “Join the Joyride” World Tour its name.
The “Joyride” box set also offers a chance to hear two previously unreleased demos of songs originally released by Per’s former group Gyllene Tider, who in 1984 tried to break the international market with the album “Heartland Café”. "In the autumn of 1989 I was going through all kinds of possible material for the new Roxette album. ”Run Run Run” and ”Another Place, Another Time” from the ”Heartland Café” album felt like quite strong contenders, so we did new and more ”Roxified” demo versions of them. ”Run Run Run” was a favourite of mine – I thought it had potential to go a long way", Per Gessle remembers. The two songs never made it to a studio recording, however. "Even though we were travelling the world constantly doing promotion for “Look Sharp!” as well as “It Must Have Been Love”, I managed to find time to write lots of new songs. Most of them were customized for Marie to sing, and in the end we preferred those", Per says.
Other unearthed demoes from 1990 are ”Small Talk”, ”Church Of Your Heart”, ”Physical Fascination”, ”Things Will Never Be The Same”, ”I Remember You” and not least the future single B-side ”The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye” – one of the strongest songs that never made it to the album. It would however become a much loved track by Roxette fans – the “Roxers” – and recorded by many artists, among them American singer Laura Branigan. ”Sweet Thing” is another one of the many songs written and demoed for the new album, giving the listener a more complete insight in the making of this classic pop album.
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