When Roxette’s Marie Fredriksson died in December 2019, the obits recalled how KDWB Minneapolis added “The Look” as a Swedish import, found by a local exchange student. That is a hard-to-imagine act of music enterprise for today’s radio, but it was a typical exploit of CHR’s late-‘80s/early-‘90s programmers, who also competed to find “bring-backs” of songs they thought should have been hits the first time.
By that time, CHR music had changed, and even those PDs and MDs who were just fine with Bon Jovi and “Bust a Move” were dipping back to the mid-‘80s for MTV pop and even the last remnants of yacht rock, in part because in 1989, they already weren’t making ‘em like that anymore. Many of the bring-backs were better typified by Sheriff, “When I’m With You” than UB40, “Red Red Wine.” “The Look” sounded like it could have been made in 1984, or 1974, but it was far cooler than most of them.
Roxette’s fortunes often tracked with the valuation of pure pop at CHR between 1989 and 1994. “Joyride” came out in spring ’91 during the format’s last good moment for having hit records of its own manufacture. By 1994, CHR had imploded. Even if there had been major CHRs in every market to play “Sleeping in My Car,” Roxette had been upstaged at radio by Ace of Base, the Swedish act who had the advantage of early support from both Alternative KROQ Los Angeles and Rhythmic CHR.
When internationally phenomenal Swedish pop groups were still a category of two, Abba was a facile comparison. Both acts were terrific at channeling the history of pop music, but Roxette’s Per Gessle threw in a few more overt Easter eggs — “Sweet Emotion” in “Joyride”; Paul Revere & the Raiders’ “Kicks” in “Sleeping In My Car.” Ballads were no contest. Roxette’s were better-written, devoid of Eurovision-style treacle, and made poignant by Fredriksson’s balance of vocal power and restraint — something appreciated more two decades later when the latter less frequently accompanies the former.
It’s Roxette’s ballads — “Listen To Your Heart” and “It Must Have Been Love” — that most endure at radio today. If you listened to European radio in 1999, you also know “I Wish I Could Fly,” a record of equal beauty and delicacy, made that much more heart-rending when Fredriksson was diagnosed with cancer three years later. It’s also interesting that the fourth most-streamed Roxette song on Spotify, after “Listen,” “Must Have Been Love,” and “The Look,” is “Spending My Time” — the last minor hit from the “Joyride” album, briefly heard in early 1992 as CHR descended into its morass.
One proper tribute to Roxette would be an act of music enterprise at your radio station. If no exchange student has stopped by your offices with a Swedish import lately, finding any song not being worked by a major label would do. If, more practically, you’d just like to hear Roxette, along with more music from the 1987-94 CHR era they helped enliven, they’re amply represented on this playlist I made based on the Facebook group, “Oh Damn! That Song.”