Song: Keep Me Waiting
Album: Tourism 
Year: 1992
Track: #6

 “iiiiiz theeeer wiiiz biz berz biz (borschk borschk borschk)” or something like that kicks this track off. I always thought that harmonized intro bit was something in Swedish… turns out it was just “Keep Me Waiting”  played backwards!

Regardless, I have no idea what this song is actually about. There’s a Ghost, a Spy, a Preacher Man and it’s still about waiting for a girl. Go figure.

Definitely not single material, but a perfect fit for the Tourism LP, not too slick as a Joyride production but poppy enough for 1992. Written for Joyride but recorded for Tourism according to Per’s The Per Gessle Archives chat with Sven Lindström.

Per once explained that if you woke him up at 3 am and asked him to write a pop song it would probably sound like “Gut Feeling” from the 2009 Party Crasher album. “Keep Me Waiting” has a very similar type of vibe and philosophy don’t you think? A fast paced, jangly guitar driven pop-rock song with lyrics that don’t really mean much, but it’s very catchy, summery and therein we’ve described a typical “Gessle” song.

There’s a lot of layered guitar work in this track both electric and acoustic sounds that give the song lots of positive energy. Do my ears deceive me but is there a slight psychedelic effect on Per’s vocals when he sings “so loooong?”

This song’s definitely a lot of fun but when you look at the hit-for-hit quality tracks that the Joyride LP had, it probably makes sense that this track wasn’t quite strong enough for the almighty monster that was 1991’s Joyride. Nonetheless, it thankfully found a home on the Tourism album and in some way, the song could easily have popped up on to Tourism‘s sister album, Travelling – it’s got that up-tempo but laid back minimal vibe – sort of a pre-cursor to the “Touched By The Hand of God” sound perhaps?

Only two songs from Tourism were released as singles… I suppose three if you count the 1993 version of “Fingertips” – but “Keep Me Waiting” wasn’t one of them. Never played live on a major tour. Didn’t feature as part of the 1993 MTV Unplugged Concert. Never featured on any release other than Tourism. Definitely a forgotten Ghost Track from the Roxette catalog. What do we all think?

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts?

“I had to fi-find out what all the money meant…”

Well, that’s it folks! It’s over now! This concludes Volume One of The Daily Roxette’s exclusive feature “Ghost Tracks”.

We hope you enjoyed the read – thanks to all our awesome readers for getting involved in the spirit of it all, your comments, opinions and passion have helped make this a fun feature to write and to read! The other cool thing is that we have all learned a lot from this series. Between Per Gessle’s comments on Facebook and our readers’ input , here’s a quick summary of what we have learned about some of these songs:

–  Per likes “Small Talk”, he thinks it’s “cool” but it’s not quite in the same league as “Dressed For Success”.

–  “I Remember You” was not available on the US CD release to help prevent cheap imports into Europe and to encourage Europeans to buy their locally made version – who knew!

–  Per had high hopes for “Fool” and he thought it could be a single… but that idea fizzled out very quickly.

–  “Touched By the Hand of God” was released as a single, apparently Per has a copy! (Albeit CDR.)

–  Per is a big fan of “Do You Wanna Go The Whole Way?” – Quote from Per on Facebook: “Yep, I’ve always loved this one (could have skipped the the m8-part when I’m singing though…) but I think we should have sped it up a bit. It’s got a great groove but it’s too slow! Dynamite vocals by Miss Effe (as always). Someone young & fresh. feeeling sexy should make a cover out of this. A surefire hit! And I love the title. That’s how it all started!”

–  “From One Heart to Another” is not a track that Per likes. Apparently, the original Swedish title was  Skepp utan roder (Ship Without Rudder) and was written for the Eurovision song contest but that version didn’t feature Per’s lyrics – in fact it’s the only song Per doesn’t own the rights to!

–  And it’s become overwhelmingly clear just how popular “Crush on You” is amongst the fans and it’s clear they want to hear it live! Is it time to start up a campaign? #crushlive2015

But what’s been the most exciting thing to discover is that Roxette fans have gone back and re-listened to some of these old songs and fallen in love all over again… or out of love too.

Keep checking The Daily Roxette – we get the feeling that Volume Two might just be around the corner!