I think we were spoiled by the Look Sharp! and Joyride 30th anniverysary editions. That doesn’t sound like a very positive start for the review of the Crash! Boom! Bang! 30th anniversary edition release, but only because those earlier releases set a high bar.
There are some things I have theories about—some grounded in reality and some just crazy. This one falls somewhere in the middle. Was “Knockin’ on Every Door” originally intended as the fifth single from Joyride? Let’s dive in.
With the ROX RMX physical release and digital reissues done, let’s look at what we gained and lost. It feels a bit like “Winners and losers / We’re all in the same show / Running and running again / Any way the wind will blow”, to be honest.
When I launched this site a few months ago, I simply reused the name of my previous fansite. A few weeks ago I was thinking where I wanted this site to go and my mind immediately went back to Roxette Central. That’s kind of where I want this site to end up (again). So, let’s do this properly and give the site back its name.
I did say: “maybe another one or two,” when I kicked off this series of posts, and this is one of those. With so many hits compilations released over the years, there are quite a few non-studio album tracks.
Wrapping up the studio albums, Good Karma gave us much more than expected. Fourteen demos, two outtakes, and nine remixes add up to give us 36 tracks in total. I’m just happy we got this final album and have almost no complaints about it.
After pulling everything together for Travelling, I realised I may have been overly harsh by judging Charm School for only having 39 tracks. I managed to scrounge together 25 tracks for this edition, and that was only possible since I generously included two demos previously included on other albums.
Slim pickings is one word I can use to describe the contents of this imagined album. At 39 tracks, it sounds impressive, but I feel slightly let down by the content. Of everything I could find, only two tracks would be entirely new for most fans. Hopefully, there are some more demos left in the drawers. There are also some unknown tracks since we know they recorded fifteen or sixteen tracks for the album and only used twelve.
Knowing that this album still has twelve unreleased demos makes this the most exciting exploration yet. Based on the album’s final tracklist, I may have unattainable expectations for those demos, though. Not to be discouraged, I’m serving up a deluxe tracklist to you on a tray.
This album was quite a departure five years after Roxette’s previous studio album. It was still Roxette, but the large gap between albums meant this was a radical change instead of a gradual one. It gave us many demos, outtakes, and remixes, meaning this one came together much more quickly than anticipated.
We’ve reached the halfway mark — for the studio albums — and this one’s very relevant today since Crash! Boom! Bang! is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary on this very day! According to rumours, the thirtieth-anniversary edition of the album won’t be out until later this year, so maybe this can serve as a bit of inspiration.
Updated on Sunday, 28 April 2024
Tourism: the album whose thirtieth-anniversary edition sparked this series of posts for me. The preceding two albums received substantial tracklists and physical releases, while Per sadly neglected this one. Since I can imagine a grand tracklist as I want, let’s see where it ends up.
So far, Joyride has had the most comprehensive tracklist and packaging of the deluxe editions released. Despite the era-inappropriate photos and non-matching fonts used in that packaging, I can at least try to assemble an even more comprehensive tracklist.
Updated on Sunday, 28 April 2024
A lot of my work has already been done for this since Look Sharp! got a thirtieth-anniversary edition on CD, LP+CD and a monstrous digital release that was amended quite a few times. The big oversight was not including any remixes, and the demo running order could use some tweaking.
I don’t know why Pearls of Passion wasn’t given the thirtieth-anniversary edition treatment that Look Sharp!, Joyride and Tourism got, but I’m going to make a wild guess that it was because Roxette had just wrapped up the Neverending Tour and Per needed to take a bit of a breather.
Updated on Friday, 22 March 2024
1986–2026. Forty years. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not long, but as an anniversary it’s a big one. With that in mind, how should Roxette’s fortieth anniversary be celebrated? I’ve been giving it some thought over the past few weeks and I have some ideas.
Welcome, Roxers! Yes, I have a new Roxette-related website again. Why? Why now? Why at all? All of your questions could be answered in this introductory post, but probably won’t be.
So, I picked up this fancy old domain. Now what?