“You make me feel so stupid…”

“…‘Stupid’, which is the kind of song I write after a bucketful of red wine on a Friday night.
I really love Friday nights. I also love red wine. And I do love those three chords.”

Per Gessle, ‘Per vs. Gessle’, ‘The World According To Gessle‘ Press Release, 1997

‘Stupid‘ is a slightly unusual entry in our #ROX40 Countdown, mainly because it had already enjoyed an entire life as a Per Gessle song before becoming Roxette.

Per’s original T&A Demo was recorded on October 28, 1996, with the finished version becoming the opening track on his solo album ‘The World According To Gessle‘ in 1997, and what an opener. Fast, loud, guitar-heavy and very Per Gessle.

As Per explained in the album’s wonderfully bonkers 1997 ‘Per vs. Gessle‘ Press Release, they deliberately went for a “home studio atmosphere”, before Christoffer Lundquist and Jens Jansson from Brainpool came along and helped finish it off.

Lyrically, ‘Stupid‘ finds Per completely outclassed by someone who apparently has everything going for them. The looks, the money, the personality, everybody loves them… while our narrator is left feeling rather less impressive.

But then three years later, ‘Stupid‘ unexpectedly became a Roxette song too…

The track was updated by Roxette in November 2000 during the wider ‘Room Service‘ era, adding Marie’s vocals and possibly some other bits and pieces. Despite this, it never appeared on the ‘Room Service‘ album when it was released the following year. Instead, its first major outing came courtesy of another familiar Roxette name: Jonas Åkerlund.

Jonas had moved into feature films with ‘Spun‘, and a new Roxette recording of ‘Stupid‘ was selected for the movie. When the film premiered at the CineVegas Film Festival in June 2002, TDR was there and confirmed that the end credits listed the track as written by Gessle and performed by Roxette. Actually hearing it in the movie was another matter!

‘Stupid‘ plays quietly in the background during one scene and is almost completely buried beneath the dialogue. Not quite an ‘It Must Have Been Love‘ in ‘Pretty Woman‘ moment, but it was there.

The Roxette version finally received a proper release in 2003 as the opening track on the Bonus EP included with the Limited Edition of ‘The Pop Hits‘. And there it sat alongside ‘Makin’ Love To You‘, ‘Bla Bla Bla Bla Bla (You Broke My Heart)‘ and other bonus material, making it another of those rather good Roxette recordings that was surprisingly easy to miss first time around.

In more recent years, ‘Stupid‘ has effectively found its way back to the period in which it was recorded, appearing as a bonus track on the expanded digital edition of ‘Room Service‘, and the upcoming 25th Anniversary Editions.

So which do we prefer?

The 1997 original has that raw, slightly scruffy, guitar-heavy energy that runs throughout ‘The World According To Gessle‘. The Roxette version is a different beast. Slightly more polished, unmistakably from a different period, and fascinating simply because we get to hear an established Per solo track pulled across into Roxette territory. Both work.

Per certainly didn’t forget about it either. ‘Stupid‘ was performed live during his 2009 European Tour, with a live performance from London appearing on ‘Gessle Over Europe‘.

Should it have been a single? As solo Per Gessle in 1997, absolutely. It sounds tailor-made for one. As Roxette in 2003? We’d probably still have given ‘Opportunity Nox‘ the honours, but ‘Stupid‘ deserved considerably more attention than being tucked away on a Limited Edition Bonus EP and Soundtrack for sure.

What do you think?

★ Currently on Streaming
01 Stupid (T&A Demo – Oct 28, 1996)
02 Stupid (The World According To Gessle – Album Version)
03 Stupid (Gessle Over Europe – Live in London)
04 Stupid (Roxette Version)

★ Missing from Streaming
– Stupid (Gessle Over Europe – Live at Cirkus, Stockholm, May 9, 2009)*

*Released on the ‘Gessle Over Europe‘ bonus DVD.