Happy 25th: Roxette, CRASH! BOOM! BANG!
25 years ago today, Roxette released their fifth studio album, an LP which provided the duo with the single which – as of this writing, at least – remains their final hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
Produced by Clarence Öfwerman at four different studios around the world (Tits & Ass Studio, Halmstad; EMI Studios, Stockholm; Mayfair Studios, London; and Capri Digital Studios, Capri), CRASH! BOOM! BANG! arrived two years after Roxette’s previous album, TOURISM, and proved to be another massive success for the Swedish duo…in places other than America, that is. Remarkably, the album never actually received a proper release in the U.S., although a trimmed-down version was sold through – of all places – McDonald’s.
Get this: more than a million copies of FAVORITES FROM CRASH! BOOM! BANG! were sold by McDonald’s, the proceeds of which were donated to the Ronald McDonald Hour charity program. It was a lovely gesture, to be sure, but traditional musical retailers were infuriated by such a high-profile release being unavailable anywhere else. This unique choice of release also led to lesser opportunities for hit singles: only “Sleeping in My Car” made a dent in the Billboard Hot 100, and it didn’t even make it into the top 40, stalling at #50. Meanwhile, the song was a top-20 hit in the UK, and the album spawned three additional top-40 hits there as well: the title track, “Fireworks,” and “Run to You.”
Since CRASH! BOOM! BANG! Roxette hasn’t just been without a hit single in the States, they literally haven’t had an album released in the States. Not properly, anyway. Thankfully, you can still check out the albums they’ve released since then through Spotify. In fact, we’ve put together a playlist that contains this album and those albums, so why not give it a listen?
