Roxette

I stumbled across some old Roxette videos on YouTube... holy hell they were good! They prove that all awesome pop-rock music comes from Sweden. I am totally in love with these guys again.

Their wikipedia has some interesting facts about them- for example, they tried for a good five years to break into the US market, to no avail. How did they get in? An American exchange student from MINNEAPOLIS brought their single for "The Look" from Sweden to KDWB (that shitty pop station we have here). KDWB started playing it, people started calling in saying "What was that???" And they passed the tape on to other radio stations. This was all before "The Look" had even been released in the US. So yay for the strong Minnesota-Scandinavia ties.

Here are their four number one hits:

"The Look"

"Joyride"

"Listen to Your Heart"

"It Must Have Been Love"

Roxette - New Music - More Music Videos

Standing Tall :: Perfect Strangers

I believe that February is "Music from TV and Movies," am I correct?

I will give you a bit of inspiration for the day- this is the theme song to "Perfect Strangers," a show that was perfectly stupid but had a really great theme song.

"Standing tall/ on the wings of my dreams / rise and fall/ on the wings of my dreams..." pretty cool! Plus I would like to say that this show inspired me to work with immigrants and refugees. Is that true? I dunno. But I loved this song when I was a kid... I think I am a bit of a Balki- I like to show up at the houses of random people in other countries and proclaim myself to be their cousin. Also, I have difficulty with revolving doors.

Staring at the Sea : The Singles 1979-1985 :: The Cure

Another great album from my adolescence was this "greatest hits" (right!) collection from the Cure. Not that this album came out when I was adolescent; rather, I was about ten years too late. I really liked early Cure stuff, though! It is sparse and fatalistic, just a little bit of that punk aesthetic mixed in. My love for the Cure goes up until the "Friday I'm in Love" era, and that is where it ends.

"I'm alive / I'm dead / I'm the stranger / killing an Arab..." holy hell. What great lines, delivered in that droll Robert Smith style. I think Smith had a really nice way of composing songs about love, too. Love is something to cherish and relish in the moment, be we all know it can be gone in an instant... "The day I start is the day you change, and fly away from me..." ("The Caterpillar").

TRIVIA: What book inspired "Killing an Arab"? Post answers in the comment section.