Gun-Marie Fredriksson of Roxette is now 41. She was born on May 30, 1958, in Össjö, Sweden. The Daily Roxette wishes her the best of luck!

Also, congratulations to Sweden for the success in the Eurovision Song Contest yesterday!

You can now download 80 screenshots from the “Anyone” video on the excellent Really Roxette web site. The pictures are very high quality (as high as you can get from TV picture). Worth of checking out!

In fact, there isn’t very much motion in the video itself, so put “Anyone” in your CD player and watch the pictures as a slide show. It’s almost like the real thing… :-)

• Really Roxette

Brainpool-bassist Christoffer Lundquist has recently got married. Multi-talented Christoffer plays also on Roxette’s latest album. Brainpool is currently on Swedish promo tour, but they won’t have any gigs before the beginning of June.

Live recordings of “Church Of Your Heart” and “Wish I Could Fly” will be released as extra tracks on the British “Anyone” single, due to be out on June 22. The tracks were recorded some time ago when Roxette performed at Capitol Cafe in London. The single will be again in 2 different parts. Acoustic Abbey Road recordings (excluding “Help!”) will also be released.

Four different teams are making remixes of the track “Stars”. Per doesn’t tell any further details yet.

Bad news to German fans: “Stars” video won’t be shot in Hamburg after all!

Per says once again at www.haveaniceday.nu that Roxette will release a video collection (apparently titled “Have A Nice Video”) before Christmas.

However, they probably won’t re-release their 1987 remix album “Dance Passion”, even though there was slight hope of getting it included in the forthcoming Roxette box-set. “I don’t think it will be on the Rox-box. We’re still thinkin’ about what to do with it, personally I don’t like the idea of re-releasing something that we don’t like”, says Per.

The box will probably contain the official release of Roxette Unplugged in 1993. “They’re all mixed and mastered already”, Per tells.

In 1995 Roxette recorded 4 acoustic tracks in the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. 3 of them (“The Look”, “Listen To Your Heart” and “You Don’t Understand Me”, my favourite) has been released as single extra tracks, but the fourth track, a cover version of the Beatles-song “Help!”, has only been played once on BBC Radio. BBC owns the rights for the song and Per has earlier said that Roxette won’t be able release it. Now things seem to have changed: “Help might be released pretty soon”, says Per at www.haveaniceday.nu.

As you probably know a scene in “Anyone” video shows Marie drowning in the sea. It was too shocking to MTV. “MTV just recieved a different edit because they didn’t want to show MF in the water during daytime. They’re British, you know!” says Per.

According to the Official Roxette Fanclub, EMI Svenska (Roxette’s record company, the Swedish division of EMI) is currently building their own web site. The site will be launched in the autum at the latest.

The domain emi.se has been registered to EMI Svenska since 1995.

“Pay The Price/Anyone” double a-side single was released in Japan on May 8. The cover picture is the same as in the European “Anyone” single. Here’s the tracklisting:

1. Pay The Price
   
2. Anyone
   
3. Cooper (Closer To God)
   
4. Anyone (T&A demo)
   

Both tracks 1 and 2 are the album versions. Release number is TOCP-40118 (8869542).

The Official Roxette Fanclub has posted a 30-second clip of “Cooper” (Closer To God) on their web site. The sound clip is in MP3 format and the file size is about 240K.

EMI Canada will release “Have A Nice Day” after all! The album will hit the Canadian record shops on June 29.

Per tells at www.haveaniceday.nu that the video for “Stars” will be shot in Stockholm, Sweden and Hamburg, Germany.

According to Per, Roxette’s US record deal is delayed, because their L.A.-based lawyer has some severe medical problems right now. A source close to the negotiations reports that “this can account for an approximately one week delay”.

Yes, there is a deal! Finally, after months of waiting by North American fans - and speculation from fans worldwide - a record distribution contract has been negotiated for the U.S. and Canada. Look to the late edition of The Daily Roxette on Monday for more on this breaking news story from Contributing Editor Lars-Erik Olson.

According to Ask Billboard, RCA, Capitol and Epic have been interested in releasing the album in the States.

Official Roxette Fan Club contacted EMI Svenska today to ask about the US record deal. This is what EMI’s Li Eriksson replied:

There is no record deal ready yet. However, we are getting closer to a decision. And when that decision is made - it isn’t ready until everyone’s signature is on the contract.

Roxette’s manager Marie Dimberg says:

This is only a rumour. Nothing has been settled yet and i’ll confirm when it is.

Per also said when he visited Holland that making the contract takes time because they’re trying to get the US release of “Don’t Bore Us - Get To The Chorus!” included in the agreement.

Per tells at www.haveaniceday.nu that the B-side of the “Stars” single (single #3 from “Have A Nice Day”) will be a previously unreleased song called “Better Off On Her Own”. The single will be in the shops in the late summer. DJ copies will be spread maybe already in mid-June.

A rumour from Italy has it that the b-side compilation Per has told about will be probably titled “Kill Your Darlings”. The album will be something like the second version of “Rarities”, a collection of single b-sides and unreleased tracks. The album is due to be out next year. This data is not confirmed by EMI.

Italian Roxette Fanclub the possible tracklisting of the forthcoming Roxette video collection. Notice that this isn’t confirmed by EMI in any way! This time it won’t be only Roxette videos, but also Marie’s and Per’s solo videos. Here it goes:

1. Wish I Could Fly
   
2. Anyone
   
3. Stars
   
4. Salvation
   
5. You Don’t Understand Me
   
6. June Afternoon
   
7. She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
   
8. Un día sin tí
   
9. The Look (unreleased first version, directed by Mats Jonstam)
   
10. Chances (’98 version) ???
    
11. Do You Wanna Be My Baby [Gessle]
    
12. Kix [Gessle]
    
13. I Want You To Know [Gessle]
    
14. Tro [Marie]
    
15. Mellan sommar och höst [Marie]
    

Per has also mentioned that the video for “Soul Deep” would be included. It can of course be that he just didn’t remember the list right.

I just keep wondering what is Chances ’98. Anyone ever heard?

As reported in the Weekend Edition of The Daily Roxette, a distribution contract for Canada has been finalized while a separate - but related - deal for the United States has been negotiated. The contract for this new U.S. deal is now awaiting the signatures of the principals involved. According to a source close to the negotiations, U.S. and Canadian fans won’t have to wait much longer to find out the name of the record label involved, but we’re still at least a week away from a formal announcement from Roxette’s management and/or EMI Svenska.

The video for “Anyone” had its premiere on Wednesday. Now you can watch a 30-second streaming Real Video clip of it on the Internet. In the clip Marie walks out of a house to the beach and straight to the sea. As you probably already know, Marie almost drowns in the video (not for real!), but she is rescued on the last minute.

On the Roxette Mailing List many people have described the video a bit boring, but very beautiful. I haven’t seen the whole video yet and I agree that at least the 30-sec clip is rather minimalistic - or boring. I just hope the clip doesn’t tell the whole truth! :-)

Roxette will be one of the stars who perform live at Capital FM’s Party in the Park. This will be the biggest open air concert in the UK in the summer of 1999. The organizers are expecting 100,000 fans to Hyde Park, London where Roxette, Texas, The Corrs, Boyzone and many more will be performing their hits live on July 4. HRH The Prince of Wales is the patron of this concert. The tickets are already for sale, so go to Capital FM’s web site and read more!

• Capital FM

The premiere for Roxette’s new video, “Anyone”, will be on Swedish TV4 next Wednesday. The video, directed by Jonas Åkerlund, was shot in Troia and Lisbon, Portugal. One of the scenes shows Marie lying on the beach, unconscious. The storyline of the video is about a lonely woman who goes back to the place where she once met the man of her life. Another scene was shot in a big park in Lisbon.

Per tells at www.haveaniceday.nu that the videos for “Wish I Could Fly” and “Anyone” cost 150000 GBP each. “Jonas is expensive, but he’s the best”, Per says.

Anton Corbijn will be the director of the “Stars” video. Corbijn is famous for the videos he’s done for U2 and Depeche Mode, but he’s also know as a photographer. You can find examples of his work at his web site.

Roxette is going to record 3 songs in Spanish: “Anyone”, “Wish I Could Fly” and “Salvation”. They will be recorded in Stockholm, Sweden.

Roxette visits Brazil in June. They are going to do “lots of TV and press and hopefully an instore”.

According to Per, “Have A Nice Day” has now sold 1.4 million copies, excluding North America of course and France. “I’m sure it will sell better than ’Crash! Boom! Bang!’. But in the end of the day - does it matter anything?” asks Per.

“Wish I Could Fly” single has sold 400,000 copies. “Extremely well”, says Per.

Roxette’s record label in the USA will be announced soon. “[We] hope to have some answer in the next 10 days”, says Per. Roxette had problems with EMI USA and according to Per EMI means in America “Every Mistake Imaginable”. Now Per and Marie are looking for another record company, Epic being the most speculated one.

One thing should be sure, however. The lead single in the US will be “Wish I Could Fly”.

“5 hours of Roxette? I’d rather say 1 hour!” This is what many fans think about MTV Europe’s “Roxette’s Greatest Hits Weekend”. During the 5 hours they showed only some Roxette videos and Per and Marie talked only briefly. They didn’t even look they really enjoyed their task. An interesting thing was that according to MTV, “June Afternoon” is from the album “Friends For Life”. Anyone ever heard about that one?!!

Per says at www.haveaniceday.nu that they actually think the MTV weekend was quite nice. It was recorded already a month ago.

• MTV Europe (Give them feedback!)