💔 From B-Side to Timeless Classic
When Roxette first released “It Must Have Been Love” in 1987, it wasn’t meant to change the world. It was a modest Christmas single — “It Must Have Been Love (Christmas for the Brokenhearted)” — released in Sweden when the duo’s international career had barely begun. But fate, and a Hollywood love story, had other plans.
Three years later, in 1990, producer Joel Sill of 20th Century Fox called Roxette’s team looking for a song to include in a new romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. The film was Pretty Woman, and the moment Marie Fredriksson’s voice soared through the speakers, Sill knew it was perfect. The band reworked the track — stripped the Christmas references, added new production — and turned it into the power ballad that would define the heartbreak of an era.
🌹 The Power of Marie Fredriksson’s Voice
Marie didn’t just sing “It Must Have Been Love.” She lived it. Her vocal performance captured the bittersweet ache of love lost — the strength in resignation, the beauty in sadness. There’s a haunting precision in her phrasing, a maturity that makes every word believable. When she sings, “It must have been love, but it’s over now,” she isn’t mourning a fairy tale — she’s facing reality with quiet grace.
Marie once said, “The best songs come from pain that you’ve survived.” This song, in many ways, became her emotional fingerprint — her ability to turn melancholy into something transcendent.
🎸 Per Gessle’s Pen and Pop Instinct
Per Gessle, Roxette’s songwriter and creative architect, had always known how to mix pop hooks with emotional honesty. With “It Must Have Been Love,” he found the perfect balance — a melody simple enough to hum, yet layered with longing.
He wrote it in the Swedish winter, inspired by the kind of loneliness that comes when love fades but memories linger. “It’s about closure,” he later explained, “not about sadness — about the moment when you understand it’s time to move on.” That’s why the song never feels desperate; it feels honest.
And when paired with Marie’s crystalline vocals, his words turned into poetry.
🎬 Pretty Woman and Global Stardom
When Pretty Woman hit theaters in March 1990, no one expected it to become one of the most iconic romantic comedies of all time. But from the moment Richard Gere closed the limo door on Julia Roberts, and the credits rolled with Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love,” the song became inseparable from the film’s fairytale heartbreak.
It soared to No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for two weeks, eventually selling millions worldwide. It wasn’t just part of the soundtrack — it was the soundtrack of a generation that believed in love even when it hurt.
Ironically, the song’s bittersweet tone contrasted with the film’s happy ending, but that’s why it worked: it gave the fairytale a human heartbeat.
🌧️ The Sound of Beautiful Sadness
What made the song timeless wasn’t its production — though Clarence Öfwerman’s shimmering arrangement was flawless — but its emotion. The song feels like a confession whispered in the rain. It doesn’t rage or beg; it simply accepts.
The line “It’s where the water flows, it’s where the wind blows” feels like a sigh — a release, a surrender. That subtle maturity is what set Roxette apart from other pop duos of the era. They weren’t afraid of silence, of simplicity, of sincerity.
🌍 Legacy and Resurgence
Three decades later, “It Must Have Been Love” remains a staple of heartbreak playlists, movie soundtracks, and karaoke stages. It re-entered the charts in the mid-90s after Pretty Woman’s re-release and again in 2019 following Marie Fredriksson’s passing — as fans worldwide revisited the song that first made them cry and smile at the same time.
For many, it’s more than a breakup ballad. It’s a memory of youth, of love that almost lasted, of someone who once made them feel infinite. And that’s the magic of Roxette — their ability to write songs that live inside people’s hearts long after the music stops.
🎶 The Final Note
When Marie Fredriksson passed away in 2019, fans and artists around the world paid tribute by playing “It Must Have Been Love.” In every voice that sang along, there was grief, but also gratitude. Because through that song, she gave people permission to feel deeply — to find beauty even in endings.
Per Gessle said at her memorial: “Marie could sing the sun out of the night.” And that’s what she did here — turned heartbreak into light.