Roxette reached 100 million views of Listen To Your Heart

It was 4 months ago when the official video to It Must Have Been Love reached 100 million views on YouTube. At that time Listen To Your Heart had 81.9 million views. Both videos were uploaded to YouTube on 4th March 2009. Today, 7 years later LTYH also reached 100 million views! Isn’t it a.w.e.s.o.m.e.? 100 million views! Seeing the view count of IMHBL (126.6 million), the future is so bright you gotta wear shades!

The song was written on 3-4 May 1988. This is what Per says about it:

I co-wrote this with MP Persson in May of 1988 and it immediately felt very special. The lyrics came from an all night conversation I’d had with a friend who was going through a heartbreaking divorce. In the studio with Roxette it sounded awesome, with Marie taking the lead role and Clarence creating that beautiful piano intro.

Our ambition was to make it sound really ”American”. I guess we succeeded…

It has become our most popular song all over the world and was our second No. 1 in the US.

The original lyrics contained some different words, so instead of ”Is there a whisper / That cannot be heard ? / You find the meaning / But you can’t find the words” the final lyrics became: ”And there are voices / That want to be heard / So much to mention / But you can’t find the words”. Sounds much better, doesn’t it?

We can find a little discussion about the song and the video to it in the Don’t Bore Us – Get to the Chorus! compilation booklet:

PG: The Big Bad Ballad. This is us trying to recreate that overblown American FM-rock sound to the point where it almost becomes absurd. We really wanted to see how far we could take it.

MF: It sounds a bit dusty today, but it was our second #1 in the US…

PG: … which of course we couldn’t ever dream about since it was more or less made for Sweden. When it hit big in the States we suddenly found ourselves lumped together with bands like Heart and Starship, which wasn’t the intention behind Roxette at all. But we got out of that one… I hope.

MF: The video was great. Shot with an American crew at the Borgholm Castle. The director thought we had built the ruin just for the video.

PG: It took some time to convince them that the place actually was for real.

MF: Today we perform it in a stripped down version, with acoustic guitars. Still love the melody.

Aw… Borgholm… It would have been so amazing to see them perform live there.

On 4th November, 1989 Roxette reached their 2nd No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with Listen To Your Heart. What was historically significant about the song is that it was the first No. 1 available only as a cassette single, not on a 45-RPM vinyl single.

A Belgian dance group, DHT did a trance cover of LTYH and it became a hit in the US and in some other countries. This way in 2005 Listen To Your Heart returned to the top 10 on the Billboard (reaching No. 8) as DHT’s remake.

The song is such a hit that American radios played it already more than 5 million times. In 1998 Roxette received an award from BMI for this song being played over 2 million times on American radio. Phil Graham of BMI said it was very unusual for a song to get over the 2 million mark in such a short space of time. In October 2006, helped by DHT’s cover, Roxette were awarded again by BMI for the song’s 3 millionth broadcast on American radio. Per and MP got the Million-Air Award for 4 million plays in 2008 and for 5 million plays in 2014.

We all remember the performances on each tour, how awesome LTYH sounds live, either in its original power ballad style (1988, 1991, 2001 (Barcelona, Stockholm) , 2009 (accompanied by a symphonic orchestra at NoTP), 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016) or in an acoustic, unplugged arrangement (1993 (MTV Unplugged just can’t be missed), 1995, 2000 (Virgin Megastore)).

This fanthem will never go out of style! Wishing many more hundreds of millions of views and radio plays of Listen To Your Heart! Congrats!

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