Perhaps it’s different for say… a Madonna fan. You pick up a copy of Billboard, her latest song is at #1… no big deal.

  But for Roxette fans, who have gone for long periods without such gratification or validation, this is a special time. The Daily Roxette’s SmallTalk forum is full of messages from excited fans talking about the success of Roxette both on singles charts, with “Centre of the Heart”, and on album charts, with “Room Service”.

  Looking just at the album charts, Roxette has cracked the Top Ten in Norway, where it’s at #7; Spain, where it’s at #5; Austria, the Czech Republic, and Germany, where it’s at #4; Switzerland, where it’s at #2; and in Sweden and Belgium, where they rule at #1.

  TDR reader and RoxNorthAmeriFan board member Jim Greulich has been known to the Roxette online fan community for years as “the chart guy”. He spends hours compiling chart data from around the world, and he’s finally found a “home” on the Web for his listings: charts.roxattaq.org.

• Roxette’s Chart Performance
• Czech Republic
• Switzerland
• Belgium
• Sweden
• Germany

ST. PETERSBURG - In Russia, a lot of pirated “Room Service” albums have been made. In this city, for example, it is almost impossible to find a real album with the booklet and photos inside. One reason for this is that a pirated CD costs only $3 while the real licensed one costs more than $20. Many, if not most shops here sell the cheap pirate CDs. Indeed, one could say that the Russian Mafia owns the Russian music industry. Read more…

According to the Spanish official album sales list, Roxette’s “Room Service” entered at position #5 for the week of April 2nd. Translated into sales figures, this means that Roxette have already sold more than 50,000 copies in the Spanish market, which means the GOLD category. It is possible that the album will reach the Platinum category in weeks to follow.

“Room Service” rocketed to the top position on the official Belgian “Ultratop 50” album chart this week, up from #29 the first week, no doubt helped by Roxette’s involvement with the Radio Donna birthday party promotion.

  This marks the second country with “Room Service” as the #1 album, as Roxette is also at the top of the album chart in Sweden.

  Two years ago “Have A Nice Day” also went to #1 in its second week and remained for two weeks. Although Roxette hasn’t really done a lot of promotion, it’s clear that they have a strong fanbase in little Belgium.

  The Belgian chart is maintained by the AC Nielsen company, famous in the U.S. for monitoring the viewership of American television programs.

• “Ultratop” chart

The Swedish newspaper Expressen started today a 3-part article on Roxette’s history. Part 1 was published today and part 2 will follow in tomorrow’s paper.

  Part 1 concentrated in the years 1985-88 when Roxette had success in Sweden, but not abroad. Everything started with a song called “Svarta glas” (“Black glasses”) that Per wrote for Pernilla Wahlgren in 1985. She didn’t want to record it, so the MD of EMI Svenska in those days, Rolf Nygren, suggested that Per would sing the song together with Marie Fredriksson, a popular Swedish singer who had had chart success with her albums “Het vind” and “Efter stormen”. Per translated the song into English and it became “Neverending Love”.

• Expressen’s article (in Swedish)

Read more…

“Room Service” is #1 - on its first week on the Swedish album chart. Rammstein and Bruce Springsteen also had new albums in the top three, but they didn’t reach the #1 spot.

  As “The Centre Of The Heart” still dominates the Swedish single chart after three weeks at #1, we can safely say that the Swedish audience hasn’t forgotten Roxette. Even the poor reviews in the Swedish press didn’t frighten the record buyers.

  Update: Both Aftonbladet and Expressen have published stories about Roxette’s current success.

• Swedish album chart (week 15)

RoxNorthAmeriFANS south of the U.S. border are pleased that EMI México has had the new album “Room Service” available in stores since Friday and that MTV Latin America has begun to show the video “The Centre of the Heart.”

Victor Diaz and Elizabeth Ramos contributed to this story.

RIO DE JAINERO - While most of the countries in the world are playing “The Centre of The Heart” as Roxette’s new single, the song hasn’t been released here. As previously reported, EMI Brazil negotiated a deal with Rede Globo - the nation’s biggest TV company - to include one of the other “Room Service” songs on their novella “Um Anjo Caiu do Céu” (“An Angel From Heaven”), so it’s “Milk and Toast and Honey” that’s getting almost all the airplay.

  The song isn’t yet on the TV program (the actor who plays the angel is pictured above), but most of radio stations are already playing it, and the reaction from the public has been favorable. The biggest young adult radio station in Brazil, Jovem Pan, is back to playing Roxette after six years!

  The last Roxette “single” to be promoted here was “I’m Sorry” in 1995. Roxette is one of Brazil’s most loved international bands, as evidenced by the fact that the first pressing of their “Greatest Hits” album - some 500,000 copies - sold out in Brazil (representing almost 10% of the worldwide total).

• Rede Globo’s “Angel” website (In Portugese)

Room Service made it to the UK today… although many of The Daily Roxette’s readers report difficulty in finding it in stock in their local record stores.

  Again, according to messages in TDR’s SmallTalk section, there has been very little, if any, advance publicity put out by EMI UK to support the release of the album.

  Along with RoxAttaq UK, a fan website called “Centre Of The Campaign” has been launched to lobby EMI UK to release the singles, and to help provide promotion for the new album.

• Centre of the Campaign
• RoxAttaq UK
• EMI:Chrysalis (Under Construction)

If only we would have had this for April Fool’s Day.

  André Humphris was sitting at his computer terminal in South Africa, and decided to do a internet search for “Roxette”, using www.aardvark.co.za.

  The result? Well, on a website owned by Taurus, a cooperative whose mission is to improve the quality of South African livestock, André found that Balloo, pictured on the left, belongs to the Roxette cow family!

• Taurus Cooperative