Look Sharp!


Band: Roxette
Album: Look Sharp!
Best song: “The Look” is a really good song.
Worst song: “View from a Hill” sucks.

I was just joking around when I asked my sister “how does it feel to be 30?” on her birthday a few years back. She, not surprisingly, said the obvious: “It feels exactly the same as 29.” As I approach my 30th birthday — five months away, everyone. You still have time to buy me something fancy! — I’m sort of considering this question more and more.

Which isn’t to say that I’ll feel completely different on my birthday than I did a day, a week or a month before. Aging is a process, of course, and without a major thing to change me — illness, job change, whatever. — change is very gradual.

A few years ago, some dance group redid “Listen to Your Heart” and released it. It was of some consequence, as any disco hit can be, as in, it was all over the pop stations for a bit. It made me feel so old. That’s outstandingly depressing.

I like when foreign nationals make records in English and the hints of their accents are always decidedly entertaining. Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson are Swedes, but, damned if their English wasn’t amazing. The duo was one of Sweden’s biggest bands before they were signed by EMI to release their abums in the States. Like so many Swedish pop imports, they did well.

Look Sharp! was one of the first CDs I ever bought. It was a mild hit in the States, from what I remember, and my sister and I were in love with the silly Scandanavian pop record. “The Look” has the stutter lyrics of a great pre-rap song, while “Dangerous” was a drop-down fun record. In a lot of ways, the record is dated, but nostalgia is a powerful thing. Picking it up again brings me back to when CDs were new, pop music was simpler (maybe it wasn’t. What do I know?) and I was but a wee lad, not having discovered metal or indie rock.

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