Famous Song Stories: Don't Bore Us, Get to the Chorus! (1995)

The album's title is a quote from the legendary founder of Motown Records, Berry Gordy, who once described his philosophy of pop music with the words "don't bore us, go straight to the chorus". The compilation was a huge commercial success – in the first two months after its release alone, it sold over 2 million copies and by 2001 over 6 million. Interestingly, it was released in the United States five years later, in 2000, and with a modified selection of songs.

You Don't Understand Me – the first song written with someone "from the outside"

The ballad, which became the main single of the selection, was written by Per for the first time in the band's history together with someone outside his usual circle of collaborators – the American composer Desmond Child (co-author of hits for Bon Jovi and Aerosmith). According to Per, Desmond came to Halmstad in the summer of 1995 purely to see if they could create something together. He brought his own idea, Per modified it and let Maria sing on the demo – only then did he realize that the song would fit exactly on Roxette. The song was not written at all with the idea that they would sing it themselves – it was supposed to go to another performer.

The video was filmed in southern England. The video was directed by Greg Masuak and was filmed in 1995 in southern England. In 2020, a new chapter was created for the song: Gessle, while preparing the rarity-compilation Bag of Trix, discovered a lost master tape with the Spanish version of "Tú No Me Comprendes" in the EMI archive, recorded at the same time as Baladas en Español, but ultimately not included in it – supposedly only because they already had too many songs for the album. A brand new video was created for this "newly discovered" version, compiled from previously unpublished footage from the personal archives of Per and Marie.

June Afternoon – a hit recorded by colleagues from Gyllene Tider

The sun-drenched, kazoo-playing song "June Afternoon" is a bit of an exception among the new releases from the album – it was largely recorded by musicians from Per's old band Gyllene Tider, with him singing the verses and chorus himself, while the main part of the bridge is sung by Marie. The song peaked in the top 40 in most of Europe, but reached the absolute top of the charts in one country – and that country was the Czech Republic, where "June Afternoon" took the top spot on the charts.

Video by Jonas Åkerlund. The video for the song was shot again by Jonas Åkerlund, by then already an established collaborator of the band since the days of "Fingertips '93". In addition, the B-side of the single was the previously unreleased recording "Seduce Me", which was written by Marie and Per together for the album Joyride (1991), but was not included on the album at the time.

She Doesn't Live Here Anymore – the song they dropped from Crash! Boom! Bang!

The last of the four new songs has an interesting history – it was not created for this selection at all, but was written and recorded a year earlier for the album Crash! Boom! Bang!, where it did not make it to the final tracklist. For the compilation, Per and Michael Ilbert only fine-tuned it and released it as the fourth and last single from Don't Bore Us, Get to the Chorus!.

A clip that ended up as a B-side to itself. The song was also released as a B-side for the previous single "The Look '95" (a re-sung, slightly rearranged version of the original 1988 hit), so this song accompanied two different Roxette singles at the same time in late 1995 and early 1996 – first as a bonus, then as a full-fledged single with its own video.