It must have been love

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’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!

As 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]

 

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.

 

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!