ranking-every-roxette-song

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #99-101

101. What’s She Like?

from Crash! Boom! Bang!

The Crash! Boom! Bang! album took a long and exhausting time to make. With 15 songs, it also takes a while to listen to. I’d say both of those things are worth the time they take, because two thirds of the way through it you can find this ballad, beloved by Per Gessle as well as by a great many fans. Just look it up on YouTube - no official video, but millions of views, all engaged in pondering the eternal question of what she’s like (alas, the song ends with us no closer to finding that out than we ever were). It’s a worried, unsettled thing from the start, with a bitterness that can’t constrain itself for too long. The cloud of delicate but heavy atmospherics gathers speed throughout, adding starry synths, rhythm guitar jitters, and various other objects floating about threateningly. There’s even a soprano sax poking in here and there, drawing out anxious crescendos. All of this cometic energy creates a massive buildup, in excess of 3 minutes, into the last chorus. It makes for a huge arrival point, especially when combined with how powerful Marie’s voice is on this. There’s also a weird little bridge in the middle of it all which sounds like it was taken from an earlier version of “Almost Unreal” - it comes completely out of the blue and knocks me out of whack when I listen to this, but it’s certainly a fun change from the constrained angst and jealousy of the rest of “What’s She Like?”. What I love most about Roxette’s music is the way it unleashes melodies and emotions fully and assuredly, but as a song where the whole point is not having someone to unleash them onto, it’s not really allowed to do so in any kind of satisfying way. It’s one of those smart and grown-up songs that I wish I could appreciate more than I do, but I’m still grateful that it exists to be loved by everyone else. After all, they do know what it’s like.

100. I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars

from Crash! Boom! Bang!

What a massive riff! This song about the long-standing rock tradition of destroying prized guitars finds Roxette’s hook machine Jonas Isacsson in absolute top form, weaving his lead guitar line around without breaking a sweat, let alone any instrument. Though nothing gets shattered, contrary to the title’s promise, we do get everything else we could possibly ask for with such a topic. The powerful and menacing groove makes this sound rather like a derecho that’s rolling through a small midwestern town and turning over the mobile homes - exceedingly fun, just as long as you manage to ignore the costs. The layers upon layers of guitars and percussion are lighter and tastier than more serious grunge, and that’s fine by me, as this is much harder to get tired of, both as a listener and (I suspect) a performer. Per’s music is ridiculously hooky as usual, the sweetest moments coming at the end of the “six-string kick inside” bridges, where the groove settles back into its stride again amid a whirr of tambourines. This song continues the long-standing Per Gessle tradition of naming his songs after classics that he loves while only changing them around slightly, and in this case the song we’re meant to be reminded of is “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass” by Nick Lowe. Whether it’s just fun for him or a way to introduce less in-the-know Roxette fans to the classics, it absolutely works: I went and listened to that song straight away, and now know the bizarre story of its recording. Overall, “I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars” never strays far from a fun mood despite all of its menace, and while some might say that it doesn’t nearly reach the intensity of a Townshend or a Cobain, people who would actually smash their guitars, that’s the point. It’s for the fan who sees them do it, goes “wow, cool, I’d never even imagine doing that sort of thing”, and then never does - that way he never has to splurge on a replacement! And to be honest, it’s Per’s song that strikes me with a harder impact, not any one of theirs.

99. Fool

from Room Service

During the recording of “Fool”, Per Gessle suffered from demo-itis - a common affliction that seems to sometimes plague almost everyone who’s been involved in writing or producing for long enough. In it, they get so attached to the demo version of a song that no proper recording can sound quite as good to them. It makes sense that he felt this way: the demo has a cool swagger about it that’s hard to put your finger on; but the final version still turned out great after all. Built on a fun amen-break-like Motownish beat, this song has a similar cool retro energy as “Soul Deep” and “Me & You & Terry & Julie”, the other times Roxette tried this sort of thing. The final version adds a nifty opening guitar riff that wasn’t yet there in the demo, as well as some extremely fitting horns that very much sound like the entrance music of a court jester. The busy beat forms the base for some fun guitar riffs and organ accents that twinkle about under the lights. I have to commend Per’s perfect “yeah yeah yeah yeah” yells as well! It’s just a fun song, but unlike in their usually timelessly unfashionable songs, in “Fool” the brand of fun is a more trendy and sleekly joyful one, a bit like the music from an ad, but that doesn’t stop it from being cool. Like Ceasars’ “Jerk It Out”, a song with a similar vibe, it very much still works when detached from the sort of clean-scrubbed product you can envision when listening to it. Throughout the song, Marie is the sort of jester who’s not afraid of any kind of authority figure, whatever political or corporate powers they may have at their disposal. She knows that in the end, they’ll come back to her anyway and she’ll have the last laugh, all without trying that hard.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #102-104

104. Good Karma

from Good Karma

This is the big one, the giant to tame. When I made the questionable decision of reading TDR’s review of Good Karma before listening to the album itself, this was the song that stood out, receiving glowing praise that promised something so great that we hadn't heard the likes of it from Marie and Per for decades. I shouldn't have read that review, but just couldn't wait, Good Karma being the first Rox album release that I'd followed properly. The introduction bodes well for all that promise, with a huge pairing of "Fading Like A Flower"-like piano and guitar, even more forceful than before. Quickly switching to a minimalistic EDM beat, it continues with one of the changes that make this feel more like a marriage of two disparate songs than a progression that builds some sort of drama. The production is full of synth after synth flashing in and out of sight like sea spray on the side of a ship, never giving us a chance to look at them but still allowing the feeling of frantic motion to come across. It ends up a beautiful sonic picture, but then the chorus comes in. The bombast of the guitars, bubbly bass, unhinged synths, cowbell and Marie together is a sudden surge that should feel absolutely huge. Somehow, it doesn’t connect with the rest of the song’s sections for me as well as it obviously should, and that always leaves me conflicted when listening. On one hand, it’s the point of this absolutely slamming chorus to provide a sudden change from the atmospherics of the verses; on the other, its production is also so huge and powerful that it doesn’t move as well as it could have done, had there been a more fluid groove under the guitars. Still, though in my view the bits of “Good Karma” don’t flow together amazingly well, there is a Son Of A Plumber-like old-fashioned bridge in the middle of the thing, and it’s gorgeous. Reading TDR’s reactions back in 2016 did hurt me in the end - it could have been as fantastic as they said, but remains just a great effort on everyone’s part that I will undoubtedly go back to sometimes.

103. Bringing Me Down To My Knees

from Room Service

There’s been a few songs in Per Gessle’s career that have been said (sometimes by him) to sound as if he’d written them in his sleep, or at least when woken up in the middle of the night. And that, I think, is absolutely a compliment - whether it’s “Gut Feeling”, “Vilket håll du än går”, “Big Black Cadillac”, or this one, they’re very immediate, simple and very him. If the world had let them get their way, Roxette would have been able to churn out songs like this forever without them getting any less lovely. More than anything, “Bringing Me Down To My Knees” is comforting. It opens with a warm line that combines guitar and synth to wind around the opening chords like the sonic equivalent of a wide smile, which is then encased loosely in the blanket of the production. That simple sine-wave sound kept popping up in Per's material almost non-stop around this time. The instruments are all bubbly, amber-coloured substances from the lab where songs are grown, and it’s functioning at full normalcy here, with new melodies and synth swells constantly rising from the vials, expanding and then falling peacefully. Marie is comfortable and earnest, making the song speak magnificently as usual and only ever finding any vocal intensity a few times. There is an acoustic guitar solo over a middle 8 that also can't be called one of the most ambitious ever, but that too works in its favour - it’s so completely effortless. The Backstreet Boys would have been mightily jealous of it, had they ever taken the time to listen to Room Service during breaks between choreography rehearsals and being fleeced by their fraudulent manager. The post-chorus string line in this is brilliant too, providing the same sort of reassuring simplicity. That’s the thing here, so much is achieved by trying so little that thinking about why it works can only confuse you further. Just like the song says, you can’t put your finger on it, it’s only possible to enjoy the ride and listen to several masters of the craft go relaxedly about their work.

102. Half A Woman, Half A Shadow

from Look Sharp!

Marie’s songs are always special points on Roxette’s albums. There’s not ever that many of them, but they do stand out from the surrounding crowd, with a different tinge to how the chord voicings, harmonies and melodies are put together. Though the lyrics to this one are again of Mr. G’s creation, you can very much tell that all around and underneath them is something different. Marie’s sophisticated harmonies are all over this, not just in the layering of voice but in the overlapping synths and guitar arpeggios that spell out big chords, as well as the dreamy pianos that come in later on. It’s all very much a sparkling new locomotive barreling confidently through a twilit misty morning landscape, and underneath this sheen there is the massive beat carrying the two awesome lead guitar lines. It does remind me a bit of “If She Knew What She Wants” by the Bangles, but slowed down, brightened, psyched up and made absolutely huge through Clarence Ofwerman’s magic production and Jonas Isaacson’s massive guitars. I don’t know how he does it, but an absolutely perfect image of a cold sun looming nearer over the horizon is conjured up in his solo. The ending is a wonderfully trippy experience too, with gratuitously phased and flanged sounds all smudging and washing down into the cold earth. In this song we find not so much half a woman as a crowd of them, with a corresponding amount of shadows, all blasting their way through the rain, away from a past that deserves no further thought. It’s such a powerful sound that it’s easy to envision a song like this becoming a lesser band’s only hit, sometime in the spring of 1987, to be longingly relistened to for decades thereafter by a few thousand loyal fans, wishing more people had remembered it. But this is Roxette, and even though I love this song, evidently it hasn’t even made my top 100 (though I do, of course, also wish more people listened to this song). I’m not really looking for moderation in explaining why I love the songs on this list, so be ready, folks, because it keeps getting even better from here on.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #105-107

107. Call Of The Wild

from Pearls of Passion

The fact that people slag off pan flutes is confusing to me. They provide a powerful addition to almost any piece of music, with their unique texture and the associations of loneliness and nature that they bring to the table of a mix, and without them we wouldn’t have had “Call Of The Wild”. As is tradition with songs from the PoP album, this too began as a Swedish demo for Per’s third solo album, and the contrast between the elegance of the finished version and the experimentation of the former is stark. In the demo, Per can be spotted indulging heavily in the services of a new and untested reverb machine, as well as his falsetto, with some extremely interesting results. Moving on from that experience, however, we can find a graceful ballad with him at his mossiest and cuddliest - there is an almost Liverpudlian pronunciation of “her” in here that I love. Outside of his voice, the chilliness and levity of the production is clear with the aforementioned synth flutes, the frosty guitars and the layers upon layers of sparkly synths. Add in wind chimes and ‘aaaaah’s, and whatever November forest this song is taking place in begins to sound shivery. This song, beautiful and fragile, makes one want to reach through their respective audio playback device and give Per something warm and woolly to put on.

106. Reveal

from the Ballad Hits

Over Roxette’s catalogue, several songs stand out from the usual brightness of the melodies by being comfortable, restrained and relaxed, and “Reveal” is the greatest example of that. It conjures up a feeling of ultimate, warm comfort. From the main guitar/bell riff and the fluffy backing vocals, it all does a remarkable job of conveying the openness and acceptance of the situation Marie is singing about. True to this same sentiment, the production’s base is stripped back so that only the muted organ and Cristoffer’s languid bass remain on the drums in the first verse. With the arrival of further harmonies come the extremely fitting oboe fills, and the oboe solo crowns one of the most beautiful middle 8s of the entire Roxette discography. A look at Wikipedia reveals (heh) that the single version with the remixed middle 8 was because Per wasn’t hot on how it was originally done, but the page refuses to divulge a source for this, so I’m going to doubt it. If it’s true, it’s one of those opinions of his that are pretty confusing, just like his disappointment at “Fireworks” - both are completely gorgeous. This is just a magically chill and comforting mix that matches its topping of lyrics perfectly, showcasing the Rox sound’s ability to find new strengths within whichever new mood it is venturing to. “Reveal” was also used as background music in the menu of the RoxBox 86-06 music video collection, a fact that wouldn’t matter much if the song didn’t work so well there too. For all its qualities and its world-weary calmness, it also creates a sensation of waiting for something more spectacular and important to start all over again.

105. Perfect Excuse

from Travelling

From what I’ve heard, there are more than a few people in the Rox universe who aren’t at all keen on Per’s Party Crasher album. For me, it is a lovely treasure bag of electronicky production and silly vocal filters that forms the middle link between his similar voyages on Have A Nice Day and Mind Control (at this rate, it’s fair to expect another EDM-style album from him around 2028-29, if we can all harbour the patience!). The original “Perfect Excuse” is a warm and lithe number on which Helena was unleashed to wonderful results, with an undulating synth pad that sounds so close to the listener, it feels like your ear is being physically dipped into it. Regardless of who liked that sensation, such as me, and who didn’t, it was clear that that sort of thing wouldn’t run when it was rerecorded as a Roxette song three years later for Travelling, and that does turn out to be the case. Much gentler and more real-sounding now, the instrumentation is simplified at the start to make space for more dynamic range to appear later, and this has an even niftier effect as the song keeps ascending in key, going to harmonically more exciting places than the original. Add the tender arranged strings, ambient pianos, and sea birds, and this begins to soar in a much different way than we had heard it before. The “Perfect” of the title starts to sound more and more fitting. This is just an exceedingly beautiful song, taken into a new and more human dimension by the changes in production and harmonies, and most importantly, Marie’s lead vocals. Finally, the way the song glides seamlessly through key after key, starting out in C and ending its flight a semitone down in B, tickles my ears to no end, and is a wonderful trip that should be revisited more often.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #108-110

110. Surrender

from Pearls of Passion

Beginning life as one of the Swedish demos for Per’s third solo album, this song took a sharp turn into the more traditional rock ballad set-up when recorded for PoP - Per had spooked the band with the “plippity-ploppity” demo and word of following in Modern Talking’s sonic footsteps. No matter how fun that sort of thing is to imagine now, what we ended up with is a sweeping and atmospheric plea for reconciliation that is no less interesting to look at. Huge, reverb-glazed guitar licks and twinkles are flying around Per and Marie’s joint lead vocals, and together with the soaring backup they are almost competing for who will get to follow the action on the ground from the highest vantage point. The only thing that stubbornly refrains from becoming airborne is the chugging beat under the whole thing, and if the cover that needed tying to the ground had been a literal tent, it would be the only thing heavy enough to peg it down. There is real anticipation building up before the drop, something much more refreshing than it has any right to be in this day and age. The riff that comes immediately after is extremely cool, giving a hint of just how incredibly sharp Jonas Isacsson would go on to sound on this sort of thing later on, as they found a sound away from the lighter dance production of the PoP album. The whole song conjures up an image of a windswept field with shiny possessions from a tent threatening to fly out of sight as the wind ramps up around it. Though this was still a stage of figuring out the formula to get the band to sound like themselves, it remains a fun song to go back to.

109. In My Own Way

from Charm School

Towards the end of Charm School, it becomes clear that the band’s ability to produce heartfelt ballads in obscene amounts has not gone anywhere, or perhaps had never left at all. The 60s trip of this album harkens back to the smaller excursions they’d taken in the 90s, and this is one of the biggest examples of that musical direction that we can see on the way. Immersed from the start in a southern twang of guitar, the huge and sprawling 6/8 beat is coated in strings and piano in a way that cannot help but seem like a more reserved recreation of “Anyone”. However, where “Anyone” was much more earth-shattering and full of sudden peaks and downfalls, “In My Own Way” has a much more gradual buildup that adds guitar accents on the backbeats,  an organ and a bubbling arpeggiator, and a snare drum sound that confuses me because of how much it makes me think of “Drive” by the Cars, which is not something that should be happening during a song like this. By the time we arrive at the middle 8 and hit power-ballad levels of drama, the surf guitar solo is there to bring us home in this powerful and momentous ballad. Even though some of the ways that the production choices attempt to work together here are confusing to me, the song was still an indication that all is well in the Rox world and that after all the time that had passed during the hiatus, we could still often get huge melodies like this one.

108. Soul Deep

from Pearls of Passion and Joyride

Per loves rubbing elbows with the pop music of the day, and not many bands were more of the day in 1986 than Eurythmics and their hit “Would I Lie To You?”, a song that became beloved to the extent that there is a brilliant BBC1 panel show named after it. Though it may be tempting to call “Soul Deep” a lightweight ripoff of the former and be done with it there and then, I would say that doing so would be missing the point by the 634 miles from London to Halmstad. Though it retains an almost identical Motown beat, the peppy backing vocals and horns, and the ridiculously charismatic bleached blonde singer, I cannot help but feeling like it’s massively more likeable and memorable. Courtesy of being written by a nerd with enough time on his hands to produce actual hooks, rather than by a pair of touring megastars in search of a new musical direction, “Soul Deep” showers the listener in sticky bits of melody in trademark Gessle fashion: there are at least 6 or 7 catchy musical ideas here, whereas “Would I Lie To You?” squeezes out about one and a half. And what great musical ideas they are! The song began as a Swedish demo, “Dansar nerför ditt stup i rekordfart”, which Per had cooled on after deeming it lyrically too silly (perish the thought!) but which would have looked absolutely amazing on an English album. One reincarnation later, it was an infectious single, and another a Joyride album track with beefed-up guitars but a little less brass. This fits the sound of the rest of the album a whole lot more than serving the song itself well, but though neither version is quite what you expect from Roxette, it remains a tremendous outing for Marie and a testament to Mr. G’s ability to produce hooks at a rate that dwarfs almost everyone else around him.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #111-113

113. I'm Sorry

from Crash! Boom! Bang!

And now we're treated to a few minutes of strong, numbing pain. That's not a bad thing, of course, but the song doesn't ever stray away from that heavy vibe or take even a hint at a happy turn. The forceful keyboards and thudding drums keep up a pounding feeling of unrelenting misery - Per’s perennial ice cream and balloons have long dropped onto the floor and floated away into the clouds respectively. No matter how much sincerity Marie is injecting into her delivery, the plodding bass and the relative lack of harmonic development between sections ensures that the song keeps flatlining, which leaves the whole thing altogether dour, even if that was the end goal here. For all the talk of “dragging you down” and making one “go round and round and round”, the song delivers on its promises in the most downer way possible, and though it has the melodies to back up its own emotion, it does end up feeling longer than just over three minutes. When passing comment on the writing of "Sleeping In My Car", Per lamented how mature and responsible the rest of the Crash! Boom! Bang! album had sounded to have made him come up with something more pop-oriented, and on this track the symptoms are clearest of all. 

112. Excuse Me, Sir, Do You Want Me to Check on Your Wife?

from Travelling

In this newest episode of Per trying on his Tom Petty storytelling guise, he delivers another extremely long title and ramps up the drama all over again. The warm, acoustic sounds of the Travelling album are pushed to their breaking point in a constant bombastic buildup to an arrival point that never quite arrives the way one expects, only ending in a whirl of wind sound effects, slide guitar overdubs and unsettled chanting. While it’s possible to take this presentation as overdramatic, it doesn’t altogether fail to make sense when coupled with the daily monotony and anxiety of the protagonist’s life. No matter how hard it is to shake the feeling that this is something a little more heavy than what Roxette should be spending their time as well as the discomfort that comes from the almost complete absence of silliness from this song, every hook is still as pure and sticky as we are used to. The healthy dose of piano and slide guitar adds gravitas to the mix, and combined with the huge and booming reverb of the entire thing, produces a wonderful effect of loneliness: he is neither remotely happy nor likely at all to share or change his situation. The haunting chanting will get stuck in your head for quite a while as surely as the fake guitarist is stuck in his relationship, and whatever confusion the tone can cause eventually gets washed away by the might of the hooks used to execute it.

111. April Clouds

from Good Karma

Many great stories in the world have ended with a whimper, or could at least have been classified as such by the proponents of cliches, but there was no way that Roxette was going to be one of them. The last song of the last album is simple and graceful, and for all the differences it bears from their usual material, still could not have been recorded by anyone else. Adapted from a World According To Gessle lyric and set to even older music, the change of month from September to April is a welcome one and brings a sense of closure that’s much more brighter and alive than in the source song. Marie’s voice does truly bring new life to any song, through the worst times and the best. The most acoustic instrumentation on the most electronically indulgent of albums cannot help but allow the album’s direction to soar off peacefully into the future, much like the butterfly on the cover. All the folk and country of the sound leave one feeling closer to the music than ever, the farther it moves away from them in time and in relevance. Though I tend to feel strangely let down when a Roxette song does not uphold the ridiculously high frequency and quality of hooks and melodies that has been set over the previous decades, this is the one case where me making that criticism would be massively missing the point. This song is beyond hooks and beyond pop - there’s been more than enough of that over the last 30+ years, and at some point a certain amount of winding down needs to happen. All that remains is to exit into the clouds gracefully, and this is the time-wisened runway where the listener needs to remain for a few minutes, waving quietly.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #114-116

116. Physical Fascination

from Joyride

Ah, “Physical Fascination”. What can you even say about it? The song can probably be said to divide Roxette fans more than any other, and I’m firmly in the “flawed but great” camp. It would be hard for anyone to claim that the lyrics aren’t a confusing mess, and the way the melodies are played out is also hard to find a pattern in. Different bits of backing vocals and Per’s lead are all jumping in and out of the mix with dizzying speed, and the chord movement can confuse you too - these aren’t all bog-standard harmonies. The jumbling together of tons of unconnected ideas could have turned out a disaster, but the song finds a way of working somehow. Every little hook is superbly well thought out - just take a listen to the great windy, metallic whooshing before “talk to me, why don’t you talk to me” or the icy coolness of “can’t take no conversation”. It’s sort of like eating your way through a bit of poorly thought out cake with too much savoury cream on the top, where the flavours don’t make any sense together until more than halfway through. “Physical Fascination” would be horrible without its middle 8, where it finally arrives at a great and calm guitar line that offers release just by not being flashy. Though this song isn’t for everybody, it’s still incredibly catchy and gives a bit of a break from the mess, letting it work in a way. But please, Per, don’t try it again.

115. Jefferson

from Room Service

Look, I don’t care much about lyrics unless they’re great enough to take a lot of notice of. However, there is such a thing as crossing the line with your lyrics, and “Jefferson” certainly does that. There’s no way to ignore it when such a goofy story with trucks and millions of bucks overlays a completely mismatched and serious sort of production. It’s a pity, because on their own the music and lyrics are both amazing (well, if you squint at the lyrics). The big, full, and driving sound is sprinkled with warm guitars and a sticky keyboard line, and they combine with the subject to give off a Tom Petty-like mood. Marie’s wonderful middle 8 later caused a fuss when the Eurodance act Groove Coverage “borrowed” it for the chorus of one of their songs. That’s rather funny, because Per has arguably written hundreds of catchier melodies than that one, whereas it turned out to be the most memorable hook ever to appear on one of their songs. Mr. G’s amazing melodic talents are again on show here, and I would love the song to bits if I didn’t have to work so hard not to laugh at the lyrics.

114. Sleeping Single

from Look Sharp!

The simple beat on this song has no reason to be as magical as it is, but it ties every other element of the song together like nothing else on Look Sharp! can. Neither the warbly saxophone line, the shiny guitar riffs, or the bubbly bass sound would have the same impact were the background percussion more fussy (like those on “View From A Hill” and “Chances”), and we need to be grateful that not all songs on this album got so overcomplicated. With all those things tastily in place, Marie is left to sound amazing and earnest amid the hopeful mood of the production, and the melodies too can do nothing but roll along nicely. Pausing for a breakdown before a great final chorus, the song gives us a wonderfully slimy guitar solo to end things off. While there isn’t much to fault it for, some parts can feel a bit thin in the production department. For example, the confusing melody at “here’s the lost and lonely look” makes it sound like Marie was expecting some sort of other chord or supporting instrument to be there, only to find that it was out for tea. But when one has to nitpick so much to find anything remotely wrong in a song, it’s only all the clearer that this is another great piece of Roxette pop.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #117-119

119. Dance Away

from Look Sharp!

Why don’t more bands throw their names in their own songs? When we hear the whispered “Roxette” at the start of this jam, we know it’s not going to muck about being serious, and it delivers. Whereas “View From A Hill” took a lot of its messy sequencers from Madonna’s music, here it’s toned down a bit and sounds more like Whitney Houston, playing to the strengths of the song much more effectively (no wonder I like this production better - it’s credited to Clarence, not Adam Moseley). Marie is her usual amazing self, even chipping in with the music and generally having fun up there on the high notes. The lyrics, though, come from an old and sweet Per demo, “The Sound Of My Falling Tears”, and I’m very torn on whether it was worth giving up that great melody for something a bit more full-blast. Still, while the whole thing is not drawn out in typical Roxette fashion, the grooves and guitars are sharp and the bridge turns out very fun. There’s a nagging presence of the original demo lurking in the shadows of the dancefloor here, and while the final song turned out good too, I can’t help feeling sorry for what else it could have been.

118. Big Black Cadillac

from Charm School

And now a whole lot of mindless fun ensues. Chunky guitars and squishy synths are plastered all around, and sprinkly arpeggiators play alongside silly vocal filters. It’s like a song from Party Crasher that’s been fed copious amounts of sugar and then spent a little too much time hanging out with “Make My Head Go Pop”. There’s sometimes the odd background laugh, sigh or yell to keep up the silliness, and it doesn’t stop at the music either. Per gets bubblegum in his hair (he really needs to add bubblegum to ice cream and balloons as part of the list for essential Gessle topics). And for all the wackiness that the song is stuffed with, there seems to be little bits and pieces of melancholy popping up often. There’s many moments when one wants to tap Per and Marie on the shoulder and remind them to be just that bit more crazy, and this ends up making the song a trifle less fun than it could have been. If only there were a few more random times we’d heard the filtered “BLAACK!” and a bit of a happier mood, it would be amazing, but for now it’s just a pretty great piece of silliness.

117. Sitting On Top Of The World

from Charm School

We know that Roxette aren’t the most musically subtle act to ever hit the airwaves, and it’s part of why we love them. But to close out Charm School, they give us a wonderfully restrained song that comes out calming and pure. Marie is sitting on top of an enveloping cloud of warm chords - the top of the world sounds like a nice place. Though the gentle riff in the chorus is more than a bit like the one from “Seven Wonders” by Fleetwood Mac (and we know that Per loves them!), I can’t think of another song quite like it. Here and there over the plush chords are subtle pieces of amazing production - the small pianos and strings in the second verse, the slide guitar on the second chorus, the watery synths and something knocking (a muffled cowbell?) on the bridge. There’s little things looming out and disappearing again all the time, like tops of buildings poking through the clouds seen from up high. A solo after the bridge blends together a spacey synth and guitar like nothing else I’ve heard. But the view from the top of the world is also partly obscured by clouds, and this same vibe was put into action even better on “From A Distance”.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #120-122

122. You Can’t Do This To Me Anymore

from Good Karma

Everyone says this sounds like Pet Shop Boys, and it’s not a bad comparison, but I’d say a more apt parallel would be that this is the rap verses from “How Do You Do!” stretched into a full song. (Colin from TDR has also brought this up.) As we’ve all got to love that bundle of energy, this also turns out cool, trippy, and easier to like than some other songs on Good Karma. The nicely kaleidoscopic production squeezes everything out of the three chords Per gave it to play with, showering everything with a gaggle of filters and effects and somehow making the melodies pretty fun. It does recycle half of a riff from “Some Other Summer” (come on, Per, we’ve just heard this part 2 tracks earlier!), but makes it sound very different on account of injecting it with something disreputable. Again, the “laughing in a dream” lyric from HDYD comes to mind on the bridge. While executing what it wants to very well, this song is still quite weird and would be one of those from Good Karma that I’d rather not revisit too often.

121. Chances

from Look Sharp!

Per’s original demo for “Chances” is, I think, one of the most surprisingly amazing things he’s ever made. A hilarious flood of bouncy percussion, a cheerful synth riff, a sharp guitar solo, and a great introductory rap (this is what really sounds like Pet Shop Boys, not the previous song!) leave it endearingly optimistic and a cool blast from the past. If that stuff stayed in the studio version, it would be one of my favourite songs on Look Sharp!. But unfortunately, the album song that I’ve got to talk about takes those supremely well-working elements and tries to make them more nuanced and mature. The change of mood, well, takes away a bit of the greatness. Per gives the lead vocals to Marie, and she makes everything more serious and dramatic; she’s doesn’t sound like she’s enjoying herself or taking any chances. The bright little riff and the Neil Tennant impression are gone, the guitars are more flowing and miserable and float in layers of glum synths. There’s sequencers that sound like they’re curling up in bed and eating chocolate to numb their pain. In short, everyone involved is suffering. And in a song about taking your chances and being adventurous to save a relationship, it sounds like it’s given up already. This means that the big mood change from a fantastic demo really lets this awesome song down. I might be unfair on it, but when I like a song so little compared to its demo, it’s bound to sink down the list a touch.

120. Joy Of A Toy

from Pearls Of Passion

If I had to write out the name of every Roxette song from memory, this would probably be somewhere near the end, because it usually seems somewhat hard to remember that it exists. Whenever I do remember it, though, it seems great - the production is really crisp with tighter guitars and drums than, probably, the rest of the PoP album. Per’s melodies are here in full force, Marie sounds amazing with her no-joke belting, and a bubbly bassline makes the chorus come alive. It’s even got a better toy metaphor than that Eurovision song from Israel (that’ll probably win this year, ugh), and brings in Independence Day out of the blue, which I think is pretty hilarious. So why, then, do I never remember it? What kind of sorcery makes this song seep out of the brain so easily? I don’t know, and that keeps me from liking it as much as I should. Oh well, this list can’t be critically accurate anyway, so here it is.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #123-125

125. Little Girl

from Room Service

This one has the music AND lyrics by Marie! Unfortunately, aside from that, I don’t know what else to remember it for. The warm synth, the wobbly delayed guitar in the background, and the understated groove are all really pleasant, and it’s good to hear from Marie about her past self. But whether it’s because of a lack of some sort of dynamic changes in the production over the course of the song or because she’s the one who wrote it, I find myself forgetting how it goes almost immediately after hearing it. Maybe it doesn’t move to new and interesting parts quickly enough, maybe it’s missing a bit of Per’s magic touch in its melodies. Either way, there’s not much interesting to talk about here (apart from the lyrics, but I always feel that the lyrics are the least important part of Roxette’s songs), and forgetting this pleasant ballad only to rediscover it every time might be the best way to enjoy it.

124. Happy On The Outside

from Charm School

And now we move into an uneasy song about an uneasy person. There’s a lot of very neat electronicky touches under the usual Roxette production that do well to keep the tension up through the whole song, and we can hear a chord progression in the verses that’s atypical of Per’s songs, giving off more unsettled moods. The sliding guitars and thick piano lines that show up later can’t help but remind me of older Coldplay (though I like this better, of course), so everything mixed together feels less pop than usual and more like recent and serious rock. That’s no trouble, however, because Per’s melodies chug on and only reinforce the serious stuff around them. We end up with a nicely melancholic track with interesting sprinkles over it to try to make it stand out (which it, unfortunately, doesn’t, it’s another one that I forget about all the time).

123. Go To Sleep

from Crash! Boom! Bang!

More Marie music! Wave after wave of dreamy chords wash over her voice, not really putting the listener to sleep, but nevertheless nailing the mood right. Through all of “Go To Sleep”, new synthesizers and other electronic flutters just keep looming out of the ballad one by one and carrying it forward. This is the sort of production that does the world of good to Marie’s gentler melodies (there’s a demo out there with Per’s music, and it doesn’t work nearly as well), and every little wave of chords that comes in works to support them. To keep everything from floating away, there’s often a sprinkle of guitar to anchor the song to the Roxette sound, but everything is only held in loosely. Out of those elements comes a very lush ballad that does everything it can with the chill bits and pieces that it has, and I can’t ask much more of it.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #126-128

128. The Weight Of The World

from Travelling, as well as some b-sides and a RoxBox

Per starts off this moody, dreamy ballad and everything floats along normally from there, though this isn’t the sort of song that ever truly starts. The more than usually melancholic harmonies and subtle filters sweeping this way and that in the background add a lot to that dreamlike feeling. But this the sort of dream where one just sits around feeling miserable - Per mentions talking to the wall. The echoey flutters and white noise continue to envelop the song as if flicking through the radio for more exciting musical ideas as well as fighting the loneliness. Marie is great as usual, complimenting the dour mood too. But when a song is so effective and great at expressing such an unwanted and bleak feeling, it’s very hard to walk away from it feeling too positive.

127. Shadow Of A Doubt

from Look Sharp!

Oh yeah, now things are picking up! There’s tons of jingly 80s percussion going at full blast, some driving sequencers and a huge dose of drama practically spilling out of the song all around. We can find so much tension in the grimly descending bassline. There might even be a touch too much of it, because the collective assault of sadness and regret through Marie’s voice, the thundering groove, and all the sparkly bits around it can wear on you after a while. The collective hand-wringing and desperation from every element of the song never takes a step back into a quieter kind of sadness, and while it sounds consistently awesome, it’s got nearly nowhere to develop to after it starts. Compared to what this sound of utter heartbreak deserves, the chorus feels a bit flatter than it could have been. And again, after listening to such an unrelenting and loud blast of complete misery, how can I feel great about it?

126. View From A Hill

from Look Sharp

Ah, no, what happened here? It sounds like British producer Adam Moseley saw Marie’s hair when she walked into the studio and confused her with Madonna. What else can explain the steaming mish-mash of rattling percussion and seizure-inducing sequencers, all with an all too funky bass underneath them? It can’t have happened out of nowhere. The fascinating thing is that she actually does sound like Madonna here, more than on any other song, and that’s not really a good thing. Sure, it does come out very catchy and danceable, but hearing Roxette like this is a weird, weird experience. Though we do hear Per asking Marie difficult questions again (I have to love it every time they trade lines like that), there’s also a saxophone section being stuffed into the song in some confusing places. The bridge continues in the same vein of funky madness, and then the weirdest moment of them all happens - some sort of zig-zagging record scratch that feels like the song trying to shake itself from the layers upon layers of groove that it’s wearing. They stay on, of course. Though “View From A Hill” has probably their weirdest ever production, it’s insanely enjoyable and has got a lot of moments to savour. And just remember, Marie’s better than your average pop icon!

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #129-131

131. Cry

from Look Sharp!

This time, we hear Roxette try their bluesy hats on with some cool results. Marie sounds absolutely fantastic here (it must be all the Aretha Franklin she listened to), and the lyrics work just that little bit better than usual. We really get to hear a lot of this heartbreak. But this was also one of the songs from Look Sharp! that were recorded in London and produced by Adam Moseley, and that experiment didn’t seem to go well. The production, loaded with a myriad of different percussion bits and weird off-beat snare drums here and there, sounds less like chilly rain than old comic books falling off a shelf. There’s also the obligatory 80s saxophone solo in the middle of it all, and a strangely awkward fretless bass sound. These all combine to pull the song back from the very cool direction it’s trying to take, and it doesn’t help that this sort of style doesn’t always welcome the most memorable of melodies either (Marie and Per wrote the music together). I’m sure it could have been amazing, but its time of making and the way it was executed makes it hard for me to truly like it.

130. I Call Your Name

from Pearls of Passion

Opening with a catchy guitar riff that’s one of the nicest things on all of PoP and continuing with a snappy verse from Marie, this at first seems like another cool pop creation from Mr. G. The beat and sense of expectation has you clamouring for a great big chorus, but that’s when something a bit annoying happens. All of the instrumentation and rhythms stay the same there, and the same continues through the second verse and chorus. A very nice and longing guitar solo arrives to give things a small push, but once again, nothing happens dynamically after. The constant and steady background in the song doesn’t let any of the melodies really do their jobs, and the whole thing flatlines slightly without ever reaching that great big moment. It was energetic enough to even get a music video, but just like Marie on the verses, it’s just sadly calling out for the listener repeatedly instead of going out and talking to them.

129. This One

from Good Karma

The Paul McCartney song of the same name is amazing, full of delicious sticky melodies and ringing guitars. It’s closer to a Roxette song than this, at least, because “This One” (this one, not that one) feels more like an outtake from Per’s very electronicky Party Crasher album. Per has talked in interviews about trying to make the rap in the verses not sound dead, but it’s still only shuffling around anemically. There’s only one huge hook that we get, but it’s so great and gets hammered into your head so repetitively that you might start to forget that it never changes or leads to something as cool. Once again, the production sounds incredible but unfamiliar (Per and Christoffer have been listening to Giorgio Moroder, but have we?), and all the electronic filters and flutters spice up the parts that the song itself can’t make fun enough. Unfortunately, I don’t at all like how Marie sounds here, I wish she had something more flowing to sing. Still, in most ways this is an interesting and fun piece of EDM. And Per says he’s gonna put something older on the jukebox? Nice!

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #132-134

134. See Me

from Travelling, as well as some b-sides and a RoxBox

Another Marie-written track, this slow ballad is held up by many lush and beautiful layers, and she taps into a whole lot of restrained melancholy here. The Travelling version adds more real instruments and some nice guitar, and the whole subdued atmosphere holds up really well. But I’m really not sure that this chillout sort of music fits Marie’s voice at all. She once again has no big melody to truly sing around, and I think this sort of song would sound more at home on an Enya record than a warm road album like Travelling. It sounds perfectly melancholic and comfortable, but almost everything else that Roxette have done is more memorable.

133. You Make It Sound So Simple

from Good Karma

This time, Per went way darker with the music and lyrics than we’d heard him before. The shimmering synths and very textured rhythmic flutters around them make this production stand out a lot from what we usually hear Roxette doing. In that sense, the production is absolutely fantastic. Because this is such a leap from the songs Per usually writes, the melodies and familiar sounds aren’t there, and he sounds a bit uncomfortable (and autotuned to bits!). The background groove never seems to change much or move anywhere. There’s not even a middle 8 to change things up slightly, and the chords barely change at all from verse to chorus (and it’s not like this progression catches the ear in the first place). This overall fantastic sound, again, doesn’t fit Per and Marie at all, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Weeknd or Justin Timberlake had put this out instead. Some people make writing this sort of moody, electronicky R&B sound simple, but Per knows that it really isn’t.

132. 20 bpm

from Good Karma

Oh, I wanted to like this. The hammering cowbell and overall groove drive things on very effectively, and Per’s distorted and vocoded vocals are cooler than one would expect. But again, his usually great melody has walked out of the studio doors here, and is out there to “make a crazy prediction, melt the science with fiction” while he’s trying to lift this beat to a Roxette classic instead of a mere power-up jam. As with a lot of stuff on Good Karma, the production is so great in adding all the small bells and whistles around the melody, but it’s not driven on by the Roxette core that we love, and comes out sounding blaring and intrusive. “20 bpm” is like a very well-intentioned, very aerodynamic, very decorated hammer that misses the nail by a bit and hits my finger.

[ranking-every-roxette-song]

Ranking Every Roxette Song, #135-137

137. Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)

from Room Service

It’s a testament to how amazing Roxette are that their worst song isn’t bad at all. There’s a lot to like here at first glance - Marie has got a familiar ballad sound to lean on, the production is warm and there’s some nice guitar sneaking in all over the background. It sounds like a normal Roxette song, and yet if you look a bit closer, something is just quite wrong. The perfectly pleasant Rox sound is trying to wrap around a Gessle melody that simply hasn’t showed up. Marie is trying her best to bring life to a tune that’s gone out for coffee and never come back, she sounds great when doing it but the best have their limits too. The bridge is trying to breathe some sort of energy into the song too, but the melodies once again turn up with nothing. So many things in this song are straining with all their might to make the neat ballad happen, but in the end, “Try” is trying to lift a heavy treasure chest of melody when all it has is a feather.

Again, it’s not even bad by any stretch. There just isn’t another Roxette song that does so little with so much.

136. Love Is All (Shine Your Love On Me)

from Crash! Boom! Bang!

“Love Is All”, on the other hand, suffers from an almost opposite struggle to “Try”. It’s a different kind of disaster. The song has got an array of huge, anthemic melodies, but tries to jam them together in a confusingly mismatched way and ends up sucking out almost all of their impact. Starting out as a deathly-slow, ethereal chant, it attempts to unravel into a bombastic ballad, like a zombie clone of “Listen To Your Heart” at what feels like a quarter of the speed. It then turns into a completely unrelated but magnificent bridge that sounds a few centuries older than the song it’s in (who knew Per could write something like this?). After returning to the huge chorus, it dissolves into almost nothing for almost a whole minute until the chorus comes roaring back in again (that stop has got the pause from “The Look” quaking in its shoes!). All of it is sprinkled with a total of 7 key changes here and there. Every part of it sounds amazing on its own, but in the end, everything moves way too slowly to make it work as a love anthem. Sure, the love is shining, but it’s doing so from light-years away and takes ages to get here.

135. Voices

from Pearls of Passion

With music by Marie, this song carries its feeling of uneasiness really well. The shimmering synths in the background and the shiny middle bridge are great at showing a sense of going slightly mad, and Marie sounds great throughout the song too, especially when on the unsettling voices from the title. There is, though, a moment that frustrates me a lot every time I hear it - just before each chorus (right after “the borderline”), there’s a chord change from major to minor that feels like it completely shatters the tension that the verse has built up. The chorus is left to almost start again from scratch on its own. Everything else bubbles along nicely, but it’s again a show of how great this band is that such a tiny letdown pulls this very solid song back a bit from their usual awesomeness.

Oh, and Per sounds like a big headache is holding him hostage. It’s good that he was feeling better by the next album.