Forever No. 1: Roxette’s ‘Joyride’

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Marie Fredriksson of Roxette by diving into the final of the Swedish duo’s four Hot 100 toppers, the giddy, overstuffed “Joyride.”  

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• Trevor Anderson

To find chart-topping power-pop in the era when George H.W. Bush occupied the Oval Office, look not to The Smithereens, The Posies, or Lloyd Cole. Instead, a Swedish duo scored a number of top 15 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 by approaching music as a cheerful amalgamation of secondhand parts. 

Per Gessle and the late Marie Fredriksson of Roxette earned their first American No. 1 in April 1989 with “The Look,” electro-rockabilly that absorbs Prince’s 1987 hit “U Got the Look” and David Essex’s glam-rock slow burn “Rock On” (itself a No. 1 hit in the spring of ‘89 in the hands of Young and the Restless star Michael Damian) and somehow sells lines like “Her loving is a wild dog” as if Gessle were reciting Macbeth. 

Forever No. 1: “The Look” (1989) | “Listen to Your Heart” (1989) | “It Must Have Been Love” (1990)

Yet Roxette looked like two-hit wonders when follow-up “Dressed for Success” peaked at No. 14, a phenomenon similar to what happened to Austrian star Falco a couple years earlier when “Vienna Calling” stalled at No. 18 after “Rock Me Amadeus” topped the chart. Then the ballad “Listen to Your Heart” broke Roxette on the mom circuit, followed by the No. 2 popper “Dangerous” and, even bigger, “It Must Have Been Love,” the theme to Julia Roberts’ 1990 megahit Pretty Woman. 

There was really no way of knowing whether the duo’s second American album would ship platinum like Look Sharp! did; after all, the almighty ABBA didn’t score a single top ten album in the States. At the apex of their global popularity, though, Roxette didn’t mess with the formula, baiting listeners with another up-tempo single. The title track to 1991’s Joyride had no trouble becoming their fourth No. 1. Debuting at No. 57 on the week of March 2, it did a steady hopscotch up the chart before a two-week stay at No. 2 behind Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby” helped accumulate enough momentum to replace it at the top on May 11. Joyride itself outpaced its predecessor on the charts, making it to No. 12 on the Billboard 200, where The Look had peaked at No. 23. 

A patchwork quilt comprising stun riffs and a whistled hook that’s only the third catchiest part, “Joyride” is a buoyant farewell to a decade of addled pop; for the rest of the ‘90s, hip-hop provided the laughs while pop played straight man. A paraphrased Paul McCartney quote (“Writing songs with John Lennon was a joyride”) and a note by Gessle’s girlfriend left on his piano (“Hello, you fool! I love you!”) inspired Roxette’s final American No. 1, Gessle told Fred Bronson in The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits.

But in no way did the duo reprise “The Look.” “Joyride” reeks of money: a track swollen with bits of business commensurate with its budget. Other elements include an acoustic guitar/wobbly sequencer interlude, a distorted voice excited about a “wonderful balloon,” and, best, Fredriksson and Gessle harmonizing on that silly-goofy chorus. With the instruments mixed as if with corsets, “Joyride” confuses kinetics with enthusiasm, but in the Wilson Phillips era, Roxette sounded like Buzzcocks. 

But Roxette weren’t done yet. In August “Fading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave)” peaked at No. 2, a ballad with surprisingly robust guitar double talk that proved an excellent showcase for Fredriksson. Blame the advent of Soundscan, promotional malfeasance, or poor single selection, for the enervated third single “Spending My Time” ended Roxette’s run of seven consecutive top 15 singles, crawling to No. 32 in January 1992. 

The duo would chart on the Hot 100 just twice more, once with “Almost Unreal,” a desultory 1993 attempt to write another movie theme, only the movie was Super Mario Bros (Gessle originally wrote it for the Bette Midler vehicle Hocus Pocus; his hitmaking instinct wasn’t the only thing fading like a flower). Nevertheless, it was a top 20 hit in the rest of the world, and Super Mario Bros. isn’t any worse than Sliver, the forgotten Sharon Stone vehicle on whose soundtrack UB40’s No.1 “Can’t Help Falling in Love” got prominent placement. 

“Joyride” doesn’t get much play on retro radio — too frantic? Think then of it as the ideal last gasp, the apogee of a band reveling in its popularity enough to apply steroids to its most commercial sound. If “join the joyride” is coercive, that’s the intention.