Stories of famous songs: Pearls of Passion (1986) + It Must Have Been Love

Before Pearls of Passion album was created, Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson were long-established names on the Swedish scene – he as the frontman of the band Gyllene Tider with three winning albums in a row, she as a solo singer with several successful albums. Gyllene Tider broke up in 1984 and Per's solo career did not go as well as he had hoped. It was at that time that the head of the Swedish branch of EMI, Rolf Nygren, came up with an idea: why not try to record something together with Marie, and directly in English? 

An interesting fact – Per did not invent the name Roxette for this project. He had used it before when he and Gyllene Tider wanted to try their luck in English, and the American Capitol Records insisted that the name "Gyllene Tider" did not work for the English-speaking audience. Gessle then borrowed the name of a song by the British band Dr. Feelgood from 1974 – Roxette. The song's author, guitarist Wilko Johnson, later said that he simply made up the name because he needed a female name with two syllables with an accent on the other for the chorus. There was never a real Roxette – until Per and Marie took that name a few years later.

Neverending Love – a song that no one wanted at first

The first single Pera and Marie together has a rejection at the beginning. Per wrote the song in Swedish under the title "Svarta glas" ("Black Glass") for singer Pernilla Wahlgren – but she turned it down because she didn't think it was good enough. On Nygren's recommendation, he translated the song into English and offered it to Maria to sing. However, Marie was not sure if she wanted to combine her busy solo career with a pop project. In the end, she agreed on the condition that they would not release any more recordings in response to a possible failure. The duet "Neverending Love" was formed, which was released in July 1986 as the very first single with the name Roxette and climbed to third place in Sweden. We have already dedicated a separate anniversary article to this single on roxette.cz.

The clip – in two versions. There are even two official videos for "Neverending Love". The first one was filmed by director Lars Loov in 1986 in Luxembourg and Marie surprisingly appears as a redhead. A year later, a second, newer video was made under the baton of director Rikard Petrelius, this time filmed at home in Sweden – this already captures Roxette in the form that fans know from later years. The double recording of one single indicates how much the label hoped for this song and how quickly the band's image changed in the first year of its existence.

Goodbye to You – the second single in the silent shadow of the first

While "Neverending Love" opened the door, the album's second single, "Goodbye to You" (December 1986), was in a much tougher position – it had to prove that the success of the first single was no accident. Like most of the album, it was recorded at EMI Studios in Stockholm under the baton of producer Clarence Öfwerman. It was this early collaboration – still without a big budget and international ambitions – that laid the foundation for the sound that Clarence and Per later transformed into a much more elaborate form on the album Look Sharp!.

A clip that was never made. Paradoxically, the most interesting thing about "Goodbye to You" is that there is no video for it. The Swedish branch of EMI decided not to shoot a video for the single at all – in the mid-80s, it was practically impossible to break out of the domestic market without video, so it clearly shows how carefully and purely local Roxette was treated at this stage. The only visual trace of the song remained the cover of the single: a black and white, slightly typed photograph by Carl Bengtsson, in which Per and Marie stand back to back.

Soul Deep – the most successful single from the album that stayed only at home

The third single, "Soul Deep", was released in February 1987 and was one of the album's strongest tracks, but it illustrates the fate of the entire Pearls of Passion album well: in Sweden and Canada, the singles from the album did well, but the rest of the world practically did not notice them. Retrospective reviews of the album still say the same thing – the album has nothing downright wrong, but it lacks the typical "big" sound that Roxette became famous for two or three years later. At that time, Per and Marie were still functioning more as two established soloists who tried a duet, rather than as a well-coordinated duo with a clear vision – which only came up with the next album.

A clip and Swedish lyrics that Pero didn't like in the end. A video for the song has already been created – again directed by Rikard Petrelius, the same director who shot the second version of the video for "Neverending Love" a few months later. In addition, the song itself has an interesting prehistory: Per first wrote it in Swedish under the (rather unromantic) title "Dansar nerför ditt stup i rekordfart", i.e. loosely "You dance down your cliff at record speed". Eventually, he decided that the Swedish lyrics were too "stupid" and wrote completely new English words to the melody – this is how "Soul Deep" as we know it today was created.

It Must Have Been Love – a Christmas song that became a global hit

But the most interesting story from this entire early period does not belong to any song directly from the album. At the end of 1987, a few weeks after the release of Pearls of Passion, Per and Marie received an unusual assignment from the German branch of EMI: German radio showed no interest in Roxette, so they came up with a proposal to try writing a "clever Christmas single". that would help them break through. Gessle wrote a melancholic ballad called "It Must Have Been Love (Christmas for the Broken Hearted)" – the Christmas motif appeared only once in the text, in a line about "a hard Christmas day". The song was released in December 1987, but it did not catch the attention of radio stations in Germany, but it became a hit at home in Sweden.

For the next two and a half years or so, the song remained just an interesting item in the catalog – until it was noticed in the late 1980s by Touchstone Pictures' music director Chris Montan (still Disney's head of music), who was browsing through Roxette's demo recordings for the upcoming film with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. The song did not fit into a Christmas movie – so Per modified it only slightly: he left Marie Fredriksson's original vocal unchanged, only replaced the word "Christmas" with the word "winter" and cut out the sound of jingle bells from the introduction. The new, "Christmas" title "It Must Have Been Love" accompanied the film Pretty Woman (1990) and became the third American number one Roxette and to this day their most famous song ever.

The clip was shot "at twice the speed". The video for the American version was shot by director Doug Freel in a storage hall and interspersed with footage from the movie Pretty Woman – in the scenes from the cinema, Marie is wearing a white dress that is easily recognizable from the film. According to Marie Fredriksson, filming was one of her strangest experiences ever: the director wanted to have all the movements slowed down, so she had to sing and move at twice the speed so that her playback would look natural after slowing down in the resulting video. In addition to this version, there is also an alternative clip completely without film footage – it was only released on the VHS collection The Videos and clips with film inserts did not appear in it at all for licensing reasons.