MELBOURNE/STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - EMI Australia claims that “The Pop Hits” will be released in Australia on April 21. According to Li Eriksson at Capitol Records Sweden, “The Pop Hits” will also be released in the UK, “in June”.

  EMI Australia will be releasing the “The Pop Hits” CD in two formats - the standard CD, and the CD with the Limited Edition EP. We have no further details on the UK release yet.

  There’s also, as previously reported, a US release date set for “The Ballad Hits” and it’s April 22.

  Thomas Evensson contributed to this article.

COPENHAGEN - Per Gessle was on the sports news this evening.

  Having spent the entire day in Denmark doing promotion (such as interviews with different newspapers like EkstraBladet and BT), Per met with a Danish former (almost) Formula 1 driver (he was in an accident and became paralysed from the waist down). They drove around in some high-performance car, and the segment was shown on Danish TV2.

SYDNEY - Marie recently sent another message directly to the fans…

Dear Marie Davis and all my fans,

  How can I thank you enough for your kind thoughts and wonderful care during my illness. I want you to know that I know that all your prayers have helped me a lot and given me a lot of strength. I’m feeling so much better every day. Slowly, I’m starting to write music again. Allthough the rest of this year will be a resting year, I’m sure I’ll see you all very soon again.

  From the bottom of my heart, a sincere thanks to all of you.

— Marie Fredriksson

EDITOR’S NOTE: The message was sent to Australian fan Marie Davis via Roxette’s manager Marie Dimberg as a thank you for the prayer chain she started when Marie got ill. Hundreds of people signed the chain to show support by praying or sending positive energy to Marie every day.

COPENHAGEN - Tomorrow, Tuesday, you have the opportunity to chat live with Per Gessle himself!
Enter http://live.jubii.dk/ and you can chat with Per beginning at 5 pm local time.

  You must log in 15 minutes before the chat begins! As has been the case previously with such an event, you can expect a combination of Danish/Swedish and English.

NEW YORK - It was 14 years ago this week that Roxette’s rise to international stardom became official — that was the week that “The Look” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.


  Already household names in their native Sweden, Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson were unknown in much of the rest of the world. In February 1989, an exchange student asked radio station KDWB in Minneapolis to play a CD he’d bought in Sweden. One of the tracks, “The Look,” scored big with listeners and, to make a long story short, about two months later the song was the top song in America.


  Nearly a decade and a half later, Roxette has enough hit material for two greatest hits packages — “The Ballad Hits” and “The Pop Hits”.

RIO DE JANEIRO - Success stories are coming out of Brazil where EMI is reporting that “The Pop Hits” turned gold in only two days and that “The Ballad Hits” is now ’double golden.’ Our best information is that gold means 50,000 copies sold.


(LoneGunman contributed to this article.)

• EMI Brazil (In Portugese)

PORT ELISABETH - Per Gessle was interviewed last Tuesday by Radio Algoa, located in South Africa. Here’s a transcript of the phone interview.



Interviewer (I): We were talking before we got started about the time differences, so I guess there’s not such a great time difference. You must be kinda looking forward to lunch I suppose?




  Per Gessle (PG): Yea well (Laughs) It’s noon in Europe, so yea, it’s one hour behind you guys.




I: How many interviews do you have scheduled?




  PG: Oh well, I’m doing about seven or eight. I’m dividing it into different countries. I started doing interviews last week. Doing a couple of hours every day. But it’s fine, it’s nice to talk to people. And the new record is coming out, you know.



Read more…

CAPE TOWN - With the release date South African edition of “The Pop Hits” just around the corner (according to the local EMI branch it will be released early next week), EMI granted a couple of local radio station the opportunity to speak to Per Gessle via phone. Cape Town’s biggest radio station, KFM, aired their interview last Tuesday on the breakfast show.


  The interviewer starts the interview asking Per if they are still touring, “Not really. We tend to travel a lot for every release apart from the current one,” Per says, “it’s not like the olden days; we haven’t worked American for a while – North America, that is. The touring the last time concentrated in Europe. We did a big tour there, but it was basically just in Europe.” Per explains that this is a “a natural development” since they both have their families now. Marie has got two children at school, so it’s difficult for her to be away for a long period. “It was different when we were younger.”


  But there’s still time for big parties, “we still have big parties though,” Per says with a big laugh, “I think it’s got to do with changing your priorities in life and especially when you’ve got kids.”

Read more…

EDITOR’S NOTE - Since TDR published this item yesterday, we’ve learned that Per Gessle is “very surprised” that the Finnish paper published this. Apparently, Iltalehti’s reporter misunderstood what he said, as Per states he “never said it will be four years to the next Roxette album.” All he ever says, according to his manager, Marie Dimberg, is that “we will have to wait until Marie feels up to working again.” /LEO

HELSINKI - According to the Finnish tabloid newspaper Iltalehti, which Per gave an interview to a little while ago in the EMI office in Stockholm, Roxette might spend some time in the studio this summer. But a new album will be released only in four years’ time. There are also some plans to go on tour with Gyllene Tider because of the 25th anniversary, but as Per stated, “everything has to be perfect.”

  On a side note, the “thing” about the article is actually the Iraqi war which Per opposes strongly. But Per is not going to write peace songs. “We’re not living in the 80s, so peace songs don’t have any effect. Musicians and lyrics used to have power, but now it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said.

• Iltalehti article (registration req’d)
• Iltalehti’s Roxette competition (win a cocktail set, dvd and the new cd)

STOCKHOLM - Today, Monday, Marie Fredriksson and her lawyer Leif Silbersky served Expressen the lawsuit that was prepared last week. As previously reported by The Daily Roxette, Expressen’s chief editor Otto Sjöberg is being sued for libel and incorrect information.

 The legal definitions are libel or coarse libel, alternatively offence or coarse offence, Silbersky tells aftonbladet.se.

  At least one witness will be called, and that is Marie Dimberg, Marie’s manager. “We have received new information that they [Expressen] knew that their information was incorrect even before publishing it,” Leif states.

• Aftonbladet’s article (In Swedish)