Original: It Must Have Been Love

This is perhaps one of Roxette’s most famous hits, It Must Have Been Love. The song was already a bit old at the time of the hit in 1990.

The original, titled It Must Have Been Love (Christmas For The Broken Hearted) was released in 1987 with the aim of gaining a foothold in Germany. The EMI label suggested making a Christmas record. Thus was born It Must Have Been Love with Turn Me On as the B-side. For the Swedish duo, success beyond national borders did not materialize.

It wasn’t until 1989 that success outside of Sweden came with The Look from the album Look Sharp. With this success, singer Per Gessle was asked to do a song for the Pretty Woman soundtrack. He in turn decided to take an existing song because he and Marie Fredriksson were just too busy playing. So he removed the Christmas bells from the song and rewrote the lyrics. Thus, “a hard Christmas day” became “a hard winter day”. Pretty Woman director Garry Marshall was so blown away by the song that he decided to build a full scene into the film in which only the song can be heard. “No one expected the film to be such a hit and for us that of course meant the jackpot,” Per said afterwards.

With the success, Roxette’s global stage became much bigger as It Must Have Been Love reached number 1 in the United States, Australia, Canada and Denmark, among others. Later, a Russian, Spanish and Brazilian version appeared. Roxette herself put a country version on the Tourism album in 1992.

Want to know more about the origins of Top 40 hits? So take a look originalhits.nl