Yesterday I got a terse Whatsapp from a very dear friend. He demanded to know if I was still alive – as I hadn’t written my blog for three months. And, in the event I was, I surely must have lost my mind – how could I think that Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple should only have one entry in my blog while Paul Simon has three?  With friends like these….. Anyways, I will remedy both these complaints asap since he’s a dear friend. However, before I get rockin’ again, let me warm up the creative juices with a Pretty Woman. No, not that way you perverts! 🤪

Last night as I was flicking channels on the TV, I saw snatches of Pretty Woman. Chocolate-box hero Richard Gere and the Noone-Can-Be-That-Beautiful-Fairy-Tale-Princess Julia Roberts – she of that incredible Million-Watt Smile!! I still remember that instant when I was first hit by the full force of that smile. Do you remember that scene when Gere snaps the jewellery case as Julia’s reaching for the necklace…and she bursts into giggles? Weak-knees time, man 🥰 !! I was absolutely blown away, as were a gazillion males across the known universe. Julia was of course a complete unknown till that movie made her a heartthrob. I don’t know if you know, but Julia only got the part because a bevy of other gorgeous women – Meg Ryan, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daryl Hannah, Drew Barrymore, Brooke Shields and Uma Thurman – all turned the role down. Talk about kismet! ⚡️ IMHO, there are only two other actresses whose smiles had the same power to stun you at a thousand paces – Madhubala and Madhuri. I digress …..but before I move on, here’s the necklace scene from Pretty Woman🥰

“Pretty Woman” had a fantastic soundtrack and was a smash hit with songs like “Oh, Pretty Woman” (I’ll come back to Roy Orbison soon as he waits patiently by the Dock Of The Bay), “King Of Wishful Thinking” (love that song), “Wild Women Do” and….. “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette. The song and its place in the movie are so perfect it seems like it was written for the movie itself. It wasn’t though – it was actually a throwaway inclusion as Roxette couldn’t be bothered to come up with a new song. So they recycled a song they had released four years earlier called “Christmas for the Broken Hearted” – which had sunk without a trace. This time around though, thanks to the movie, the song blew the roof off. It was was literally everywhere. I remember listening to it at a New Year’s party in Bombay well before the movie came out and it absolutely captivated me. I recall it was heartbreak season and the song really hit me. Soppy as it was, this tale of broken-hearted regret, immediately made its way onto my playlist and mixtapes. I must admit I still feel a bit mushy when I hear it, even 30 years later. And it clearly had the same effect on millions of people around the world as it hit #1 everywhere. The video has almost 593M views on YouTube!

Roxette, were the Swedish pop-duo comprising of Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson. They were bona-fide pop superstars in Sweden, but for the longest time they remained “world famous only in Sweden”😁. And then, in 1989, global stardom came for them in an incredible “what-are-the-chances” kind of way! Roxette released their second album “Look Sharp!” in 1988 and the first song on it was “The Look”. It was a big hit in Sweden, for a while, it seemed, as per usual, it would just stay there. Until fate intervened in the form of Dean Cushman, an American exchange student. That spring-break, Dean went back home to Minneapolis with a CD of Look Sharp! and gave it to his local radio station asking them to play it. After sitting on it for weeks, on a whim, the station played “The Look”. The phones instantly lit up as listeners dialled in demanding the song again and again. And in just eight weeks the unknown Swedish duo had a US #1 hit! The lyrics of the song are top grade stream of consciousness romantic poetry – “She’s a miracle, man/ Loving is the ocean/ Kissing is the wet sand/ She’s got the look”…🤔 Brilliant word pictures combined with a killer riff, and hook after hook that just go round in your head for hours later. Loved it!!

“Listen To Your Heart” was also on the Look Sharp! album. When The Look became a super hit, the record company suddenly thought Roxette might actually be a real phenom. So, after having ignored Roxette for a long time, a few months later they released “Listen To Your Heart”. And just like that, Roxette had two consecutive #1s within months – something even their Swedish ancestors, ABBA, never had. (did you know that ABBA only had one #1 in the US – that’s just insane!!! 😱). “Listen To Your Heart” is a monster of a ballad and has remained a guilty pleasure for me all these years later! 😍

Roxette had one more hit early in the 90s – remember “Joyride” with that amazing chorus “Hello you fool, I love you / C’mon join the joyride” ? Per Gessle got those lyrics from a note his girlfriend (and future wife) left for him when she went out shopping ❤️. The chorus and the whistling on the song are such an earworm! Kismet – I tell you, Roxette certainly got more than their fair share!

Let me end with a pub quiz question – What’s the connection between the Roxette and a not-very-famous-but-fantastic 70s Brit Pub band? Answer on a postcard please