Roxette – Let Your Heart Dance With Me

The long-awaited 2nd treat from Bag of Trix – Music from the Roxette Vaults album series is out this Friday.

A previously unreleased Roxette single, Let Your Heart Dance With Me is one of the last recordings Roxette ever did and is released almost a year after the tragic passing of lead singer Marie Fredriksson. It will be available on digital platforms on 2nd October and is to be released as a limited edition 7″ golden vinyl single in 1500 copies worldwide on 9th October.

Thanks to songwriter Per Gessle’s prolific flow of tunes, classic Swedish pop group Roxette always had a surplus of material to choose between for their albums. Many of these leftover songs were actually strong contenders for inclusion and their quality has made them loved among fans when they’ve popped up as bonus material on singles or compilations.

This was the case up until the release of Roxette’s final studio album, Good Karma, which in the summer of 2016 yielded a couple of songs that weren’t needed for the album. On of them was Let Your Heart Dance With Me, but it finally sees the light of day thanks to the Bag of Trix box set, Roxette’s magnifique collection of unreleased material. The first volume of Bag of Trix is planned to be released on 30th October.

Per says about Let Your Heart Dance With Me:

I wanted to write a classic and simple “clap your hands and stomp your feet” song, and “Let Your Heart Dance With Me” came out of it. I liked it already in the studio, but as usual we already had so many strong contenders that it had to wait for a second chance. And when the idea for this project came up, it was a given.

Gessle gave Let Your Heart Dance With Me to mixing maestro Ronny Lahti, who some two decades ago gave the Roxette album Room Service its characteristic pop shimmer. The result now is a song that radiates summer, sun and optimism, despite being recorded during a time when Marie was on her final days with Roxette due to increasing health problems following her cancer treatment a decade earlier.

Per Gessle says:

Just a couple of months before “Good Karma” was released, Marie’s doctors advised her to quit touring for good. We cancelled the Summer tour and all future commitments. But even a studio recording was demanding for her. She wanted so much, but really had to fight to get it out. And she did. Marie was a real trooper to the very end.

To celebrate this release, Mr. G will do an exclusive interview and answer fans’ questions LIVE on Roxette’s YouTube channel at 16.30 CEST on Friday, 2nd October. After that, premiere of the music video to Let Your Heart Dance With Me will happen at 17.00 CEST. Save the link to the Q&A and the music video premiere HERE and get ready with your questions!

The music video showcases Per and Marie’s close friendship and long companionship that led to the worldwide success. To quote Per:

We’ve also put together a beautiful music video for the song including private footage from the glorious past. Lots of memories and plenty of joy, hopefully not only for me but also for people interested in what Roxette is all about. Can’t wait to watch it together with you – our fans – who made it all possible.

See teasers of the music video here: 1; 2; 3.

See Per announcing the Q&A session HERE.

PRE-ORDER the limited edition single at Bengans, Ginza or check the availability with your local music stores, since it’s a worldwide release. UPDATE on 1st October: the single seems to be sold out at Bengans and Ginza. It might be available again on release day, but it’s worth trying to buy it in other stores. CDON, for example.

Tracklist

A            Let Your Heart Dance With Me
B            Help! (Abbey Road Sessions)

Press release in Swedish can be found HERE.

Let Your Heart Dance With Me

It was so easy to fall in love
It got so simple to fall in love
You know what I did?
I got excited
We were united
So delighted

It was so easy to laugh with you
It was so simple to look at you
You made it possible
By being beautiful
So incredible
Truly wonderful

Dance with me
Let your heart dance with me
Dance with me
Let your heart dance with me
Let me see you smile

I might be living in my car
I might be running near and far
When stars can’t find me
You know where I’ll be
Closed in the mystery
The love of you and me

Dance with me
Let your heart dance with me
Dance with me
Let your heart dance with me
Let me see you smile again
Let me see that smile

Words + Music by Per Gessle
© Jimmy Fun Music

Watch the premiere interview with Per Gessle HERE and the video to Let Your Heart Dance With Me HERE.

500 million views of Roxette’s It Must Have Been Love video

It was on Valentine’s Day in 2016 when It Must Have Been Love’s official video reached 100 million views on YouTube. Now 4.5 years later we are celebrating 500 million views! Half a billion! Amazing! That’s almost 1,475,695 days (4,043 years!) of playing the video constantly.

IMHBL is definitely Roxette’s biggest hit and what a history it has! Even if Roxette’s debut album became double platinum in Sweden, it wasn’t released abroad. EMI in Germany said they should write a Christmas song, then they might get airplay on the radio. Per went home and wrote It Must Have Been Love (Christmas for the Broken Hearted). It was a big song in Sweden in 1987, but it wasn’t even released in Germany. The first video to the song was made for a Swedish chart show, Listan and was later used as a semi-official clip.

One day, after Roxette broke through in the US, they were having lunch with their record company in Los Angeles. The record label said they signed a contract for a soundtrack to a movie then called 3000 Dollars. Julia Roberts was to debut in that film and it was a comeback for Richard Gere. It was said to be a low budget movie for which they wanted Per to write a song. Roxette was travelling a lot, so Mr. G didn’t have the time to write a song, but he said he has a Christmas song that Marie sings beautifully and he can re-write the text and take away the Christmas reference in it. So Christmas day became winter’s day. Then they partly re-recorded the song and sent it to Garry Marshall, director of Pretty Woman. Per and Marie were already working on the Joyride album when they got a call in the studio in Stockholm. It was Garry Marshall himself who called Per to tell him he loved the song so much he even re-edited the movie, because he didn’t want any dialogue during the song being played. He wanted the song to speak for itself. Someone once told Per he could have won an Oscar with IMHBL, but it couldn’t have happened, because the song wasn’t originally written for the movie. Anyway, it became a big hit. Big! Huge!

Of course, the song had to get a proper video and so the second clip which became the official one was shot in a warehouse. According to Marie, shooting the video was a weird experience:

The director wanted all movements in slow motion so I had to lip sync the vocals in double speed. My first lesson in how to sing an emotional ballad Mickey Mouse style. A strange way to make a living.

It Must Have Been Love became Roxette’s 3rd US No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1990 and spent 2 weeks at that position.

Per told about IMHBL in his Songs, Sketches & Reflections book:

It Must Have Been Love was written quite early on in the Roxette career, in the spring of 1987, and probably is the first example of my being about to find my style in English. But that as well contains some grammatical oddities. ”Lay a whisper on my pillow / Leave the winter on the ground / I wake up lonely, there’s air of silence”. That last line – ”there’s air of silence” – is a questionable phrase, so when English speaking artists cover the track, they often change that very line.

During my European solo tour in 2009, I also changed the first verse to ”I wake up lonely to the silence in the bedroom, it’s all around”. But otherwise I still like most of the lyrics, and a simple line like ”it’s where the wind blows, it’s where the water flows” still sets the right feeling and temperature, I think.

I read in an English magazine that the opening line of IMHBL – ”Lay a whisper on my pillow” – was an unusually beautiful metaphor, which I of course also thought when I wrote it. But such a line is completely depending on the fact that I’m navigating in a foreign language. It would never have hit me to write a line like ”Lay a whisper on my pillow” in Swedish. But it felt completely right in English.

Per says this is Marie’s song, he wrote it for her. It was a piece of cake for Marie to sing it and she was singing it magnificently. Always. Besides the official releases in four different versions, we could hear it on so many concerts on several tours live. No one else could and no one else will ever be able to sing this song the way Marie did. This is HER ballad, one of her signature songs. When you hear it, you immediately think of Marie. And that won’t ever change.

 

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!

LTYH_100_million_views

 

Official videos are moved to Roxette YouTube channel

You probably remember when in May 2014 suddenly almost all official Roxette videos were set to private on EMI’s YouTube channel. It was quite weird, because even Per posted ”We are just as surprised as you are!!! However…we’re working on it!!!! /P.” It wasn’t only Roxette that faced the issue. Many other bands had the same problem during those times. We were afraid the vids and their view counts would get lost, since it seemed that the handover between EMI and Warner didn’t include the videos on YouTube. Fortunately, 2 months later the videos were set back to public.

Then in March 2015 the videos disappeared again. Some days later the official Roxette YouTube channel was set up and Marie & Per invited us in a lovely welcome video to subscribe. At the same time, all videos were set back to public, but still on emimusic channel.

Now it seems a great solution could be found to move all official videos from emimusic channel to Roxette channel with having the same link to the videos and not losing the view counts either. Well done!!!

1 month ago It Must Have Been Love reached 100 million views and now it’s over 106 million. Pure awesomeness! Keep on watching the videos, Roxers!

Hopefully, there will be new content, too. How about a new video clip? Maybe to the new single? Let’s see what happens!

Subscribe and watch the videos HERE!

rox_youtube

 

Roxette reached 100 million views of It Must Have Been Love

Roxette’s official video to It Must Have Been Love was uploaded to emimusic YouTube channel on 4th March 2009. Today, almost 7 years later the video reached 100 million views! Awesomeness! 100 million views!

IMHBL_100_million_viewsAs we all know, the ballad started out as a Christmas song with the title It Must Have Been Love (Christmas for the Broken Hearted), recorded in 1987. Roxette’s German record company suggested them to write a Christmas song, to help the duo get played on German radio. It Must Have Been Love (Christmas for the Broken Hearted) was a hit in Sweden, but German stations still refused to play Roxette. This is how Per remembers it:

EMI Germany asked us to make a Xmas record. “It’s gonna be easier for you guys to get airplay in this market”, they said. Danke Schön. So I wrote It Must Have Been Love and made a slightly clumsy demo. We then recorded it properly with Marie and Clarence at the brand new digital Audio Sweden Studio in Stockholm, released it in Sweden and had a huge Xmas hit! Germany? Nah, they didn’t want it! No release there. Sorry guys, next time…

The video to the original version of the song was shot also in 1987. As Per says:

It was made for a Swedish Chart-show called “Listan” and was later used a semi-official video-clip. Low budgets. High hair. My Veillette-Citron guitar is present!

Regarding how Pretty Woman came in sight, Mr. G says:

After we had made it in the US with The Look and Listen To Your Heart, we got invited to write a song for the Pretty Woman-movie (it was called something else at the time, can’t remember what…)* But I didn’t have any time left since we were busy doing promo all over the world, so we offered them It Must Have Been Love with slightly new lyrics (Christmas day became winter’s day). Life was never the same again.

*[3,000 Dollars – it was the title of the script back then. PP]

IMHBL_01_rs  IMHBL_02_rs

Garry Marshall, the director of the movie liked It Must Have Been Love and called Per after 3-4 months and said he just had to call him to tell he loved the song so much he even re-edited the movie, because he didn’t want any dialogue during the song being played. He wanted the song to speak for itself. Per didn’t really know what Garry was talking about since he hadn’t seen the film, but a couple of months later the movie came out and it became a blockbuster. With this, It Must Have Been Love became a blockbuster, too. Per says:

It shows that you have to have the song and you also have to have a little bit of luck and you have to be in the right position at the right time, which is really rare for anyone in any profession. It’s all about timing. It was exactly the same song in 1987 when no German station wanted to play it. Of course we made a new intro to it, rerecorded it and Humberto Gatica, the hippest mixing engineer at the time, used his ‘lucky snare’ on it, but the song was the same.

Of course the song had to get a proper video clip and so the second video which became the official one was shot in a warehouse. According to Marie, shooting the video was a weird experience:

The director wanted all movements in slow motion so I had to lip sync the vocals in double speed. My first lesson in how to sing an emotional ballad Mickey Mouse style. A strange way to make a living.

IMHBL_03_rs  IMHBL_04_rs

It Must Have Been Love became Roxette’s third No. 1 in the US and spent two weeks at this position on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1990. Billboard magazine listed the song as the No. 2 Hot 100 single of the year. The single also topped the charts in more than 20 other countries around the world.

This is what Marie says about the Billboard success:

Our third #1 in the U.S. … not bad for a song that was lying around, gathering dust.

Not bad indeed. There are different versions of the song on several Roxette records. It’s an obvious track on the greatest hits albums and we still can’t get enough of it. It can’t be missed on the live setlist on tours and we love hearing the intro talk to it:

It started out as a Christmas song in the ’80s and found its way to hot hot Hollywood!

A fantastic crowd sing along is always guaranteed!

The song’s unbreakable success is also shown by the number of American radio plays. Per got BMI’s Million-Air Award for 4 million plays in 2005 and for 5 million plays in 2014.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of It Must Have Been Love, a limited edition vinyl single was released in May 2015.

The hit is a real evergreen. Many try to do covers and participate in different talent shows with the song, but no one can make such outstanding versions as Roxette themselves and sing it from the deep bottom of the heart as Marie does.

Wishing many more hundreds of millions of views and radio plays, as well as further heartwarming sing alongs all around the world!