Did you know? 2 extremely important Roxette songs were written on this day 27 years ago. Yeah, Per Gessle, the 8th wonder songwriter wrote Joyride and Spending My Time on the same day. Isn’t he a genius? I mean, look at these 2 songs. Both of them are masterpieces and he could just come up with the power pop song in the morning and the big ballad in the afternoon. He is second to none!
Per says about Joyride:
When I wrote this one Roxette was sitting on top of the world. Three number ones in the US already and more to come. It felt like nothing could go wrong, I was full of self-confidence and every song felt so easy to create.
My wife (then girlfriend) left a note on my piano saying in Swedish: ”Hej din tok, jag älskar dej!”, which means ”Hello you fool, I love you!” It just had to be a chorus.
The writing process went very quickly. So fast I actually wrote ”Spending My Time” together with MP Persson the same afternoon. Hallelujah!
On The Per Gessle Archives you can listen to 2 demos of Joyride: first a less produced, acoustic Joyrider recorded on 22 May 1990 at T&A and a lot more produced Joyride recorded on 23 May 1990 at T&A. Listen to Per and Sven Lindström talking about the demos HERE.
Per about Spending My Time:
The music to ”Spending My Time” was cowritten with my old chap MP Persson. We finished writing it the very same day that I wrote ”Joyride”. Must’ve been May 1990.
I liked the idea of writing a lyric that starts in the morning and ends at night. This was my humble attempt. Great vocal performance by Marie and a super production from Clarence made this one a winner for Roxette.
On The Per Gessle Archives you can listen to the demo to Spending My Time recorded on 24 May 1990 at T&A. Listen to Per and Sven talking about the demo HERE.
Per adds:
I knew we had a great song (MP and I wrote this one together) but the demo always sucked!!! I couldn’t sing it very well, I don’t know why. It was always meant for Marie. She did a tremendous job delivering it. I’m sure it would have become a Top 5 song in the US if EMI wouldn’t have scrapped the entire company and sacked 122 people in the middle of marketing this one. People loved it but radio never got the chance to catch up. The Music Business. You win some, you lose some.
Pics are from ”Songs, Sketches & Reflections”.
Per’s quotes are from his book ”Songs, Sketches & Reflections” and the demo conversations from The Per Gessle Archives, as well as the PG about songs section on RoxBlog.