Roxette are marking 30 years of ‘Joyride’ with a definitive, expanded reissue of the classic album.
The group’s third studio LP followed three US No. 1 hits – The Look, Listen To Your Heart and It Must Have Been Love – and its title track gave Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle a fourth chart-topper.
This autumn, the 30th Anniversary of ‘Joyride’ will be celebrated with the release of a 4LP and 3CD box, containing the original release as well as previously unreleased or hard-to-get material.
The box set comes complete with an illustrated 32-page booklet, telling the story of the album and detailing the creation of the album’s 12 unheard tracks, including planned opener Hotblooded.
Gessle says of the release: “In the autumn of 1989 I was going through all kinds of possible material for the new Roxette album. Run Run Run and Another Place, Another Time from the ‘Heartland Café’ album felt like quite strong contenders, so we did new and more ‘Roxified’ demo versions of them.
“Run Run Run was a favourite of mine – I thought it had potential to go a long way,” he says, however the tracks never made it to a studio recording.
“Even though we were travelling the world constantly doing promotion for Look Sharp! as well as It Must Have Been Love, I managed to find time to write lots of new songs. Most of them were customized for Marie to sing, and in the end we preferred those,” he adds.
Other unearthed demos from 1990 are Small Talk, Church Of Your Heart, Physical Fascination, Things Will Never Be The Same, I Remember You and B-side The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye, which was covered by numerous artists including Laura Branigan.
Two tracks – Small Talk and Hotblooded – will be released digitally on October 8. ‘Joyride (30th Anniversary)’, due November 26, will be available to pre-order shortly. 1LP editions, including standard black and coloured variants, are also available.
