UPDATED - The Official Roxette Fanclub has removed the cover pictures of “Room Service” album and “The Centre Of The Heart” single from their website on request by Roxette’s management. The Daily Roxette has not received such request and thus we still have the album and single covers online. According to the fanclub’s website, the reason for removing the pictures is that “it’s not the final version yet and the artwork is not yet approved.”

  Interestingly enough, EMI Electrola, Roxette’s record company in Germany, has the same, unapproved single cover on their website.

  Update 3/7/2001: The fanclub has now returned the images on their website. While they seem to be exactly the same pictures as before, the shield logo has been altered so as to be less transparent.

STOCKHOLM - EMI Sweden’s preliminary publicity information for “Room Service” now includes a 12-song track listing for the album. The tracks, in order of appearance, are:

1. “Real Sugar”
   
2. “The Centre Of The Heart (Is A Suburb To The Brain)”
   
3. “Milk and Toast and Honey”
   
4. “Jefferson”
   
5. “Little Girl”
   
6. “Looking For Jane”
   
7. “Bringing Me Down To My Knees”
   
8. “Make My Head Go Pop”
   
9. “Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)”
   
10. “Fool”
    
11. “It Takes You No Time To Get Here”
    
12. “My World, My Love, My Life”.
    

(Thanks to RoxSpain for the cover pic.)

STOCKHOLM - Roxette are guests on the RIX Morning Zoo program here tomorrow (Friday) morning. The program is broadcast from 6-10 a.m. over the RIX network of radio stations throughout Sweden, and via the internet.

• RIX-FM

Mr. Edmundo, a Swedish entertainment site partially owned by Per Gessle, is currently featuring a “behind-the-scenes” look at the production of the “Centre of the Heart” video. Several of the shots used show the outside of the Madonna Inn in California where the video was filmed.

• Mr. Edmundo (most of the site is in English)

STOCKHOLM - Swedish radio station NRJ (a.k.a. “energy”) has picked TCOTH as their “Smash Hit” this week. NRJ is considered by many to be the “coolest” radio station in Sweden. If their listeners start to like Roxette… well, at least here in Sweden, Roxette seems to be succeeding in reaching out to a younger audience and capturing new fans. It looks like we have a hit!

  TCOTH was also last weeks third most played song on Sweden’s most popular non-commercial radiostation, P3. P3’s audience is somewhat older than that of NRG.

Editor’s Note: With thousands of radio stations, we obviously can’t publish every station-specific “success story” for TCOTH as airplay takes off around the world. We’ll do our best to keep you informed though. This story from TDR reporter Per Andren, along with news of similar successes (in Belgium and Argentina, for example) serves to indicate that the song has very strong potential.

  Even Roxette and their management sense they have a hit on their hands. “We are receiving an amazing response for the first single from all over the world,” they said to TDR today, “and of course we are very excited about that.” - LEO

• NRJ “Energy” Radio
• Hit FM Argentina (El centro del corazÛn)

The very active Spanish Roxette fanclub has published the cover of “The Centre Of The Heart” retail single on their website, RoxSpain. The cover picture is from Madonna Inn, the hotel where Roxette shot the video for the song.

  Editor’s Note: Madonna Inn has a very nice online tour to their various rooms. It might be fun to browse through the pictures and try to find out which rooms Roxette used for the video and for promotional pictures such as this single cover. I don’t know if that’s possible, but let’s try it!

  (Judith, thanks again!)

• Larger picture of the cover at RoxSpain

The Swedish TV4 broadcasted the world premiere of “The Centre Of The Heart” video on Tuesday morning. Roxette was also interviewed on their morning show. Both the interview and the new video can be seen in streaming video format on TV4’s website.

  (Thanks to Judith!)

• Roxette at TV4
• Interview (Swedish, Real video)
• “The Centre Of The Heart” video (Real video)

The title of Roxette’s new track has British spelling, not American spelling which has been widely used also on this site. This means that the name of the single is “The Centre Of The Heart (Is A Suburb To The Brain)”. The confirmation to this came from the recently released promo single (the cover of which is on the right).

  The promo single’s call number is CDPRO 4275. According to liner notes, the song is published by Hip Happy and it’s “produced by Per Gessle, Marie Fredriksson and Clarence Öfwerman for Roxette Recordings.” The sleeve also says that “’The Centre of the Heart’ backing track co-produced by Michael Ilbert,” whatever that means.

  The track was recorded at Atlantis and Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden between January 2000 and January 2001 and the engineer at the recordings was Ronny Lahti. The song was mixed at Polar Studios between December 2000 and January 2001 by Ronny Lahti, Clarence Öfwerman and Per Gessle. Additional recordings were made at Tits & Ass, Halmstad (engineer MP Persson), Studio Stacken, Stockholm (engineer Clarence Öfwerman) and Studio Vinden, Djursholm (engineer Mikael Boloys). The song was mastered by Chris Blair at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London.

  Thomas Evensson contributed to this article.

NEW YORK - (UPDATED) Edel America Records (EAR), touted by Roxette themselves as being the right record company for them here in the States, has not yet committed to releasing “Room Service”, and has no plans to release “Center of the Heart” as a single. “It’s up in the air,” an EAR spokesperson told The Daily Roxette. This, despite reports in Billboard of an April 3rd release date.

  “We wouldn’t be an important artist for Sony or Warner. But for Edel, we are,” Per and Marie were quoted as saying in an interview published by Hallandsposten at the time the record deal was announced. “We’ll get the highest priority there,” they said. But in a recent article in a Swedish newspaper, Per hinted that “Room Service” might not be released here, and this appears to be the case.

  Meanwhile, across the border in Canada, there’s been confusion. TDR reader Mark Gershkovich (MuSicGuRu) reported that he recently contacted EMI Music Canada and was told that they have dropped Roxette from their roster of artists. Confirming this with their press office yesterday, The Daily Roxette was told “It’s not on our release schedule.” However, this same press officer called back today to retract that statement, saying that they would indeed release the album in early May. “We just got the rights,” she said. Whether accurate or not, they thought Edel had them.

  EMI Canada’s website has all along continued to list Roxette as one of their international artists, and previous albums are still available.

Editor’s Note: We’ll have a further update on the U.S. part of this story very soon. Please keep in mind that TDR often depends on its readers for news, as was the case with the Canadian portion of this article. You too can be a reporter. Please use the “Submit Article” button rather than simply posting a new SmallTalk thread when you have “Front Page” news.

• EMI Music Canada
• Edel America Records

LONDON - Rumours abound about the state of affairs at EMI UK with regards to Roxette’s new offerings.

  EMI UK Consumer Relations advisor, Martin Nutley, has no idea about any upcoming Roxette releases - yet the rest of the EMI world does seem to know.

  There has been no official announcement from EMI UK about any release - yet Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles was praising the song three days ago. Other radio stations have not received a copy of the single, despite Rox-fans in the UK desperately trying to secure hits as a part of the UK Roxattaq.

Editor’s Note:  Is this the first suggestion that EMI UK is actually going to fulfill their promise of not releasing any singles from artists who fail to sell a certain amount of units? UPDATE: EMI Sweden has said that EMI UK will release “Room Service”… so we’re still waiting for EMI UK to confirm this. - LEO