Stories of famous songs: Joyride (1991)

Recording took eleven months, including at London's famous Abbey Road studio, and although Roxette was pressured by label management to move to Los Angeles and work with established American producers, the duo resisted the pressure and remained loyal to Stockholm and longtime producer Clarence Öfwerman. The decision paid off: Joyride propelled the band to the pinnacle of popularity and kicked off the Join the Joyride! tour, where Roxette played 100 concerts to more than 1.7 million spectators on four continents.

Joyride – title inspired by Paul McCartney and a message on the piano

The opening line of the title song was born completely outside the studio. Per admitted that he was inspired by a message left on the piano by his then-girlfriend (now wife) – written in Swedish "Hey, you fool, I love you". Per borrowed the title of the song from an interview in which Paul McCartney compared songwriting with John Lennon to a "joyride" – a carefree ride during which you don't even have to be sure exactly where you are going, just because you enjoy it. It is precisely this feeling of "ecstatic insignificance", as it was later described by the music critic of the Stereogum website, that also became the visual language of the clip.

The video was shot in the desert and 186 minutes of material for four minutes of song. The video was again directed by Doug Freel, this time in the Mojave Desert near Los Angeles. In it, Roxette get off the bus and jump on the hood of a red sports car that hurtles with them through the desert, while they both play guitars right on the hood – some of the footage was also shot using the rear-screen projection technique, so the pair sometimes look like they are sitting on the wing of an airplane. Freel shot an incredible 186 minutes of raw material for a song that is less than four minutes long. Eighteen reels of 35mm film were sent to Sweden after filming, where they ended up forgotten on a shelf in EMI's basement – they were not rediscovered until the album's 30th anniversary in 2021, when they were used to create a restored 4K version of the clip.

Fading Like a Flower – video shot in the cold in Gamla Stan

The ballad, which AllMusic described as "painfully beautiful", was written by Per himself, and in the US and Canada, only Bryan Adams' American hit "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" prevented it from winning the first place – Roxette finished at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in two countries at the same time.

A clip freezing in Stockholm's Old Town. The video was shot again by Doug Freel, this time right at home in Stockholm – in the historic Gamla Stan district and in front of the Stockholm City Hall building (Stadshuset). According to period photographs from the shooting, which were later published by the band's official archive, there was more of a winter mood than a romantic atmosphere on the set: the crew filmed in freezing weather, yet the result turned out exactly as the director and the band imagined. A few years later, in 1996, Roxette sang the song again in the Spanish version for the compilation Baladas en Español.

Spending My Time – a hit that was killed by the reorganization of his own label

The ballad was written by Per together with Mats Persson and initially sung by Per himself in the demo version – it was only after playing it that it became clear to everyone that the song needed a more emotional, vulnerable rendition by Marie. Per himself later admitted that his own demo sounded so weak that the song would not have made it to the charts at all.

Even with Marie's singing, however, "Spending My Time" eventually fell short of the previous singles and became the first Roxette song not to reach the Top 30 in the US. According to Per, this was not due to the quality of the song, but to unfortunate timing – in the middle of promoting the single, the EMI label underwent a major restructuring and laid off over one hundred and twenty employees, so there was no one to persuade the radio to play the song anymore.

A clip without a big budget. The video for the song is strikingly intimate compared to the spectacular desert of "Joyride" or the filming in the center of Stockholm for "Fading Like a Flower" – it captures Marie in the interior of the house, sitting by the window, lying on the bed or sitting at the table. The sober concept of the video thus inadvertently corresponds to the fate of the single itself, which did not receive promotion to the same extent as its predecessors.