In a kind of inadvertent celebration of Christmas in July, Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love”—originally written as a holiday song and released in 1987 in the group’s native Sweden—was slightly tweaked and reissued for the soundtrack of the 1990 blockbuster Pretty Woman. That movie had a long shelf life (it spent 16 weeks in the U.S. Top 10 after its March 23, 1990 release), and its soundtrack spawned a few hits, including Roxette’s and Go West’s “King of Wishful Thinking.” Lyrically, the pop duo left some frost around the edges (“Leave the winter on the ground”; “It’s a hard winter’s day…”), but Marie Fredriksson’s increasingly impassioned vocal delivery brings the heat. Her ad-libs at the end, including what sounds like an impromptu key change, are as astounding today as they were 33 summers ago. The production, with its big hollow drums and piano/synth tête-à-tête in the break, is the stuff of pure early ‘90s power balladry—emphasis on the power.
The infatuation described in “Weak”—losing control, being in a daze, a heart racing in triple time (dangerous, but we’ve been there), and of course, getting weak in the knees—sets spring fever to music. And, indeed, the single’s crawl to the top of the charts began when it was released on April 16, 1993—eventually dislodging Janet Jackson’s megahit “That’s the Way Love Goes” from the top of the charts to finally hit No. 1 that July, and has since proven to be one of the defining ballads of ‘90s R&B. You’d be hard pressed to find one as sweet—though as was the case for most of the New York-based trio’s output, there’s still a bit of edge here. Lead singer Coko’s limber voice has a distinct, piercing tone, the keyboard that opens the song sounds like something that could have been purchased at Radio Shack, and you can hear the air moving in the stripped-down track, endowing it with a sense of humidity. “I had written this song love song ‘Weak’ for Charlie Wilson, but I gave it to them,” writer/producer Brian Alexander Morgan recalled to Rolling Stone in 2015. “Coko was real cold to me at first and not very nice. She didn’t like the song and gave me real attitude when we recorded it.” You can’t hear it at all on the record. A consummate professional.