My papa told me to stay out of trouble

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

17/04/94 : Crash! Boom! Bang! - Roxette


Our second visit with Roxette and last time I thought it was OK, but this is four years later and I kinda thought everyone would have had enough Roxette by now - but I guess not. Also, somewhat bizarrely, when I loaded this album up in Amazon, I was met with a fan poll asking me "What do you think about Roxette's increasing popularity?" - are they coming back? Did they ever even go away?!?

Considering this album for the time being - it's an interesting one. Fundamentally, it's really not a very good album - it's got some very average tracks on it with the production being somewhat random, with the percussion often being ridiculously high in the mix (and also not particularly worth accentuating). But, every so often, particularly when Marie Fredriksson is singing, you get the odd sprinkle of the old Roxette sound and, although I can't claim it's something I absolutely love, I found myself thinking "that's what I'm looking for". But those times were few and far between unfortunately - it's also not a good album cover

We're at #3 with a new entry in the charts this week on the start of a thoroughly undeserved twenty week run, with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Pink Floyd, Deacon Blue, Marvin Gaye and Ace Of Base - what a peculiar top five indeed, with the highest new entry being Hole (#13). 

Wikipedia tells us this is their fifth album and has remarkably little on the album other than the curious tale of the US release. Before the full album was released in Europe, a cut-down version of the album was put out in the US, but it was only available to purchase in - go on, guess. Yup - McDonalds. It sold over a million copies there, but wasn't eligible for the charts because of the random rules used to compile them - amusingly, some bright spark had the idea of buying a load up and importing them into Europe but lawyers got involved and clamped down on that pretty sharpish. The only other items of interest relate to the tour because they played a show in China (making them the first Western act to do so since Wham! in '85) and in Russia on May 1st (apparently making them the first act to do so since 1917, which seems a bit odd). 

Critically, the reviews were generally nice enough (although only 3/10 from NME) but there was definitely a feeling that Marie should have been allowed to sing more of the songs (and I can quite go along with that - no-one wants to hear from Per). Commercially, it did very well though, particularly in Europe getting to #2 in Finland, Germany and Spain and #1 in Sweden (who knew?) and Switzerland, selling five million copies globally. Looking at their entry, this was their last big album over here and they did go quiet in the '90s and '00s but they popped up again in the '10s, Unfortunately Marie died as a result of a brain tumour in '19, but Per now has Lina on vocals and is currently touring - you can go and see them at Wembley Arena next week if you really want to. 

This doesn't feel like a record collectors dream and discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent CD copy for a couple of quid, but if you want the original vinyl version it's going to set you back £95! No, thank you - there are glimmers of tolerable Roxette in here, but most of it is hidden by less tolerable noises for me, I'm afraid.

10/04/94 - Quite enjoyable
24/04/94 - Fine if you like that sort of thing

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