As of 2001, the album has sold over 11 million copies worldwide. The band toured extensively to support the record, performing to over 1.7 million people across four continents during the " Join the Joyride! Tour". " Joyride", " Fading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave)", " The Big L.", " Spending My Time" and " Church of Your Heart" were released as singles. It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time in Argentina, Austria and Germany. The album was a critical and commercial success upon release, with a retrospective review for AllMusic calling it "the work of two pop artists at the top of their game." Joyride topped the charts in seven European countries, and was certified multi-platinum in several territories. The duo experienced considerable pressure from their record label to deliver a successful follow-up album, and resisted pressure to relocate to Los Angeles and work with experienced American producers. The album was recorded over an 11-month period in Sweden. Joyride is the third studio album by Swedish pop duo Roxette, released on 28 March 1991 by EMI as the follow-up to their international breakthrough Look Sharp! (1988), as well as the non-album single " It Must Have Been Love", from the soundtrack to Pretty Woman (1990). " Fading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave)".”Sweet Thing” is another one of the many songs written and demoed for the new album, giving the listener a more complete insight in the making of this classic pop album. It would however become a much loved track by Roxette fans – the “Roxers” – and recorded by many artists, among them American singer Laura Branigan. Other unearthed demoes from 1990 are ”Small Talk”, ”Church Of Your Heart”, ”Physical Fascination”, ”Things Will Never Be The Same”, ”I Remember You” and not least the future single B-side ”The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye” – one of the strongest songs that never made it to the album. Most of them were customized for Marie to sing, and in the end we preferred those, Per says. Even though we were travelling the world constantly doing promotion for “Look Sharp!” as well as “It Must Have Been Love”, I managed to find time to write lots of new songs. The two songs never made it to a studio recording, however. ”Run Run Run” was a favourite of mine – I thought it had potential to go a long way, Per Gessle remembers. ”Run Run Run” and ”Another Place, Another Time” from the ”Heartland Café” album felt like quite strong contenders, so we did new and more ”Roxified” demo versions of them. In the autumn of 1989 I was going through all kinds of possible material for the new Roxette album. The “Joyride” box set also offers a chance to hear two previously unreleased demos of songs originally released by Per’s former group Gyllene Tider, who in 1984 tried to break the international market with the album “Heartland Café”.
On May 1, the title track zoomed all the way up to #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart – setting a record no Scandinavian group or artist has yet been able to break, helping to make “Joyride” a 11+ million seller. ”Joyride” was the album that was supposed to cement Roxette’s new-found status as a global hit-makers. Three US #1 singles - “The Look”, “Listen To Your Heart” and “It Must Have Been Love” - and other big hits like “Dressed For Success” and “Dangerous” had rapidly made the Roxette duo Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle a world-wide hit phenomenon. This year, Swedish group Roxette celebrates the 30th Anniversary of their third album “Joyride”, following the band’s spectacular global breakthrough with “Look Sharp!” in 1989.