Roxette celebrates “Have A Nice Day” 20th Anniversary!💥 🎶 Original CD will be released 12th of April as a double yellow vinyl album. For pre-order: https://lnk.to/HaveANiceDay
Having sold more than 80 million records since their formation in 1986, Roxette easily qualifies as one of the world’s biggest and most enduring pop groups. This spring the duo celebrates the 20th anniversary of their “Have A Nice Day” album, which for the first time is released on vinyl—and a double album to boot.
It was on February 22, 1999 that Roxette’s eagerly awaited sixth studio album ”Have A Nice Day” landed in record stores, preceded by the single smash ”Wish I Could Fly”. Almost five years had passed since the band’s previous album with new material—”Crash! Boom! Bang!”—was released, but neither Marie Fredriksson nor Per Gessle had been idle during the time in between.
The 1995 Roxette compilation album ”Don’t Bore Us—Get To The Chorus” featured newly recorded single hits like “You Don’t Understand Me” and ”June Afternoon”, the Spanish ballad album “Baladas en Espanol” was released in 1996, followed by Per’s international solo debut album ”The World According To Gessle” in 1997—not forgetting that both the two leading Rox stars had become parents during the layoff. No wonder five years went in a snap.
New pop landscape
It was a competitive Roxette that returned to a pop world where the musical map had been slightly redrawn during the latter part of the 90’s.
Roxette’s international break in 1989 paved the way for a new generation of Swedish pop artists, songwriters and producers, and it was a re-born gang of young veterans that returned to pick up the new competition.
Per Gessle looks back at the record as a definite highlight in the band’s career:
- Song-wise I think ”Have A Nice Day” could be our best album ever, maybe the only one that turned out like I hoped it would. That’s probably because the five-year break allowed enough time for lots of songs to grow—I wrote some of my strongest stuff and Marie’s ”Waiting For The Rain” and ”Beautiful Things” are among the best things she ever made for Roxette. And then we also added some crucial new members to our core team, he says today.
”Have A Nice Day” was recorded in the south of Spain as well as in Stockholm during the best part of 1998, and in many ways recharged the band in the process. Swedish indie producer Michael Ilbert was enlisted as Clarence Öfwerman’s co-producer in order to energize the Roxette sound, and future Roxette producer and musician Christoffer Lundquist also made his debut in the recording team during this time.
Yet another million-seller
The outcome was an updated Roxette sound and yet another multi-million selling international success. It had taken five years, but 14 songs and 55 minutes of music gave the Roxette fans a lot of goodies to sink their teeth into. The first single ”Wish I Could Fly” became the most played song on European radio in 1999, and the other three singles ”Anyone”, ”Stars” and ”Salvation” also made a mark—not least thanks to spectacular and slightly surrealistic videos by Jonas Åkerlund (”Wish I Could Fly” and ”Anyone”) and Anton Corbijn (”Stars” and ”Salvation”).
”Have A Nice Day” is probably the Roxette album that most consistently and playfully explored new musical territories; techno pop with a children’s choir in ”Stars”, 60’s inspired drama in ”Waiting For The Rain”, guitar ringing power-pop in ”Pay The Price”, not to mention the overlooked minimalistic masterpiece ”Staring At The Ground”.
- We were testing a lot of different things on ”Have A Nice Day”, mixing guitar pop ditties with drum machine driven dance beats, also adding more strings than on any previous album. And we’re talking real string sections here. You can tell that it’s recorded by a band with a big budget—maybe too big, he smiles.
Logical double album
That ”Have A Nice Day” finally is released on vinyl and as a double album is only logical, Per Gessle thinks.
- It has many songs and quite a long running time, a fact which in hindsight might have hurt it a bit—the “too much of a good thing” syndrome. Maybe ”Have A Nice Day” always was a double album that somewhat reluctantly was squeezed into a single CD. That’s why I love the double vinyl album format in this re-release. “Have A Nice Day” has come home again.
For pre-order: https://lnk.to/HaveANiceDay
