Almost Unreal

This pop-rock ballad was the lead single from the soundtrack to the 1993 movie Super Mario Bros., but it was actually written for a different movie. Per Gessle of Roxette was asked to write a song for the fantasy film Hocus Pocus, starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy as a trio of witches (which explains the lyrics, "I love when you do that hocus pocus to me"). But at the last minute, the producers decided to go with a track by the R&B group En Vogue – then ditched them in favor of Sarah Jessica Parker singing the central song "Come Little Children."

When Roxette was dropped from Hocus Pocus, Gessle rewrote the lyrics to the title tune and renamed it "Sweet Emotions," but didn't like it. He went back to the original demo and just removed most of the references to the movie and called it "Almost Unreal," making it suitable for Super Mario Bros. That movie, starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as the popular Nintendo game heroes Mario and Luigi, was a huge flop. The Roxette song, however, reached the Top 10 in the UK.

Marie Fredriksson, the duo's primary vocalist, was nine months pregnant when she recorded this at Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden.