It must be Roxette

The music may not be this generation ... perhaps it is time to broaden your views.

For a few years in the early 1990s, Roxette were one of the biggest pop acts around, scoring hit after hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Look, Listen to Your Heart, Joyride, and Fading Like a Flower - they produced the kind of hits that you simply couldn't help but hum along to.

Roxette are more or less forgotten these days, at least outside their native Sweden, and they have had some tough times since the glory days, including a brain tumour diagnosis for Marie Frederiksson, who is the female half of the group.

It is a shame they have faded from international view because - although never darlings of the music critics - they were and still are songwriters and performers of the very top rank.

A new EMI compilation album, Saddest Songs, could help the group to reach a new audience since it features their tearjerker It Must Have Been Love.

Per Gessle, one of the co-writers of the number, alternates Roxette vocal duties with Frederiksson and provides a rockier edge to his female partner's more sentimental tones. Recently Persson and Gessle received an award after the song achieved four million plays on US radio.

It Must Have Been Love is a classic song of - well, what do you think? - lost love, and although a touch cheesy it can tug at the heartstrings if you are feeling depressed.

The album Saddest Songs is pleasantly diverse, featuring everyone from the androgynous Boy George on the Culture Club hit Do You Really Want to Hurt Me to Britain's Peter Pan of pop, the evergreen Cliff Richard, on his classic We Don't Talk Anymore.

Now there's no doubt that many of these tunes and artists are hardly what you expect today's generation of youngsters to be listening to - Ricky Valence and Don McLean, now who's interested in them you might think - but just perhaps you will decide to broaden your record collection after taking in these tracks.

There's enough to tempt the contemporary pop lover - Blue, Atomic Kitten and Moby for example - and quite a few songs that show that even back in the dim and distant 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s decent music was being made. Speak to you next week.

And the Daniel goes to ...
It Must Have Been Love by Roxette on the EMI compilation album Saddest Songs. This hit, which featured Marie Frederiksson on lead vocals and was included on the soundtrack to the movie Pretty Woman, reached number one in the US and did well in the UK. Mats Persson and Per Gessle wrote it.

- The writer is the concert-loving travelling bard of Gulf News.