Stories of famous songs: Look Sharp! (1988)

The Look – a hit that originated as a "waste" idea

Few songs have such a paradoxical origin as The Look. When composing the music on the new synthesizer, Per sang only a temporary "guide" text to the melody – words that were supposed to serve purely to memorize rhythm and phrasing and were later to be replaced by something more meaningful. In the end, however, he and Marie decided that they could not come up with a better version, so practically the original version remained. That's why some passages of the lyrics (such as the opening lines) don't make full sense in the context of the song. Per later admitted that he had long considered the song to be just a filler song for the album and did not even want to release it as a single because it did not fit into the established scheme of "he writes, she sings".

But fate arranged it differently. American high school student Dean Cushman brought the album home from an exchange and handed the recording over to a local radio DJ (more in Biography). The station started playing it, and others joined – all at a time when the album Look Sharp! was first rejected in the US by the EMI/Capitol label. Within eight weeks, The Look climbed to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 – the first of four number one numbers that Roxette won in America.

A clip and a scandal with a toilet. The video was shot by director Peter Heath against the backdrop of a stylized "nightclub ruin". However, the resulting video clip caused a minor "scandal". In one scene, Marie sits (fully dressed, of course) and plays the guitar on a closed toilet bowl. This was still enough for several American TV stations to refuse to include the clip in the broadcast, which only illustrates how conservative the American music TV environment was in 1988.

Listen to Your Heart – a ballad recorded on the ruins of a castle

The music for the ballad Listen to Your Heart was written by Per with Mats "M.P." Persson, the former guitarist of his old band Gyllene Tider – it was Persson who brought the chord sequence of stanzas to the studio. The song climbed to number one on the charts in the US and Canada, and also made history by being the first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 that was not released on a classic seven-inch vinyl record – it was only sold as a cassette single.

A clip at the castle that no one believed was real. The video was shot by the American crew of director Doug Freel on the spot, on the ruins of Borgholm Castle on the island of Öland. Marie later recalled that the director was convinced that the Roxette had this ruin built specifically for filming – it took them some time to convince him that the castle was really old (dating back to the 13th century) and absolutely real. A year later, in 1989, Roxette shot several more music videos at the same location, including the song Dangerous – Borgholm Castle became the band's home shooting scene for a while at the turn of the 80s and 90s.

Dressed for Success – a song that did not convince Per at first

Dressed for Success was released as the first single from the album and managed to keep the top of the charts for three months in many countries (e.g. in South Africa, where Roxette became a huge phenomenon). Interestingly, Per himself was not very convinced of the song at first – it was only Marie Fredriksson's energetic singing that assured him that the song had potential. Marie herself later described the recording as a chaotic session full of arguments about the arrangement and key changes, after which she went to sing the scratch vocal angry and tired – and the recording on the first attempt eventually became the final one.

The text about "dressing for success" and building a career has also become the subject of a minor misunderstanding in some radio stations in the USA due to a similar-sounding connection – the stations had to verify that it is really a "success" and not an ambiguous allusion.

A clip recycling scenery from The Look. The video for the song was again shot by director Peter Heath, right in the same "club ruins" backdrop that served for The Look. Given that both songs were released as singles in the span of only a few months, it made practical sense to use the scenery again – for an attentive viewer, both clips are visually quite similar, which still blends together for some fans today.