The male half of the Swedish duo Roxette, Per Gessle said of this track: "The Big Bad Ballad. This is us trying to recreate that overblown American FM-Rock sound to the point where it almost becomes absurd. We really wanted to see how far we could take it."
His music partner Marie Fredriksson added: "It sounds a bit dusty today, but it was our second #1 in the US."
Per Gessle: "Which of course we couldn't ever dream about since it was more or less made for Sweden. When it hit big in the States we suddenly found ourselves lumped together with bands like Heart and Starship, which wasn't the intention behind Roxette at all. But we got out of that one... I hope."
Marie Fredriksson: "The video was great. Shot with an American crew at the Borgholm Castle. The director thought we had built the ruin just for the video."
Per Gessle: "It took some time to convince them that the place actually was for real."
According to Sweden TV4's vote in October 2006, Roxette's Best Video Ever was the one for this song, with over 30% of the votes. The video was recorded at Borgholm castle ruins on the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Oland. Marie Fredriksson is barefoot in the video, so some fans sent her shoes.
In 2005 Belgian group D.H.T. featuring Emdee had a UK and US top 10 hit with a trance cover of this. It was one of the few times a trance song reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. D.H.T. originally stood for Danger Hardcore Team; it was later changed to Dance. House. Trance.
In 1998 Roxette received an award from BMI for this song being played over 2 million times on American radio. Phil Graham of BMI said it was very unusual for a song to get over the 2 million mark in such a short space of time. In October 2006, helped by D.H.T's trance cover, Roxette were awarded again by BMI for the song's 3 millionth broadcast on American radio.
This was the first Hot 100 #1 hit not available on vinyl. It was sold only as a cassette single.
In a March 2011 interview with the London commuter freesheet
Metro, Per Gessle was asked, "Have you heard your songs in any unlikely places?" to which he replied: "I was in an airport in New York last year, showing my passport at customs. The official asked what I did, I said I was a songwriter and he said, 'Oh yeah, have you done anything I might have heard of?' I said: 'I've done this one,' because 'Listen To Your Heart' was playing over the speakers at the same time."
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Suggestion credit:
Alexander Baron - London, England
The duo's longtime producer Clarence Ofwerman came up with the keyboard intro, which he plays on the track.
Gessle told Billboard magazine how his friend's love life inspired the lyrics: "That's one of the rare occasions when I wrote the story about a very good friend of mine who went through a difficult divorce. We sat up all night discussing his problem. When it went to number one in the States, I got this fax from him telling me, 'Hey it's great - you and me and Marie are number one in America!'"
This was used on several TV shows, including Cold Case ("Maternal Instincts," 2004), Reunion ("1989," 2005), Scream Queens ("Dorkus," 2015), Mr. Robot ("eps3.1_undo.gz," 2017), and Killing Eve ("The Hungry Caterpillar," 2019).
This was featured in the 2015 horror movie Curve, starring Julianne Hough.
