35 Years Ago Today, Roxette Was at No. 1 With a Song Inspired by Something Paul McCartney Said About John Lennon

Remember the Swedish pop-rock duo Roxette? Formed in the mid-1980s and still together today, Roxette enjoyed a few No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in their heyday. One such hit was “Joyride”, the title track of the band’s most successful album.

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“Joyride” peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on this day, May 11, 1991. The song first entered the chart in early March. It remained at No. 1 for one week and remained on the chart in some capacity for 19 weeks. It would be Roxette’s final No. 1 hit on that coveted chart. Though, they would continue to hit the Top 40 in Sweden for decades after that final US No. 1 hit.

Despite having a very unique Roxette vibe, “Joyride” was actually inspired by The Beatles. And not in the way that you might think.

Paul McCartney Once Referred To Writing Songs With John Lennon as a “Joyride”

“Joyride” by Roxette was written by Per Gessle. The story goes that the song’s opening line, “Hello, you fool, I love you,” was inspired by a note left by his girlfriend on his piano at the time. However, the title of the song, along with some of its lyrics, was actually inspired by The Beatles’ Paul McCartney. Specifically, the title was taken from an interview that McCartney did at some point in his career, as described by Gessle himself.

“I had read an interview with Paul McCartney where he said: ‘Writing songs with John Lennon was always a long joyride,’” said Gessle, translated from Swedish. “I liked the word, I didn’t realize then what joyride actually meant: stealing a car, crashing it and leaving it standing.”

The interview that Gessle referenced appears to be lost to time, as it is apparently not available anywhere online. However, I can certainly imagine McCartney saying such a thing about his famous songwriting partnership with Lennon, which lasted through most of the 1960s and ended when The Beatles broke up in 1970.

Without input from Gessle, many might have missed this pretty obscure reference. That didn’t stop “Joyride” from becoming a massive international hit. It peaked at No. 1 across the US, Sweden, Canada, and most of Europe.

Photo by Sobli/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images