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

Roxette will be performing in “Schlager-SM,” the Swedish pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, on Friday in Malmö, Sweden. Roxette is not taking part in the contest, but they will be on the stage during the voting, after each competitor has performed.

  The show has a very limited budget and thus it’s a big surprise that they got Roxette to perform. “Roxette will perform practically for free,” says Expressen’s anonymous source. “But to get the chance to perform at Schlager-SM has a huge promotional value.” So, it isn’t so much of a surprise that according to the source, the initiative for Roxette’s live performance came from EMI Svenska, their record company.

  Schlager-SM was watched last year by 4 million viewers. Roxette’s performance on the show won’t be officially revealed until Thursday, but Expressen seems to be very certain of their source. (Helge and several people on the Roxette Mailing List contributed to this article)

• Expressen’s Swedish article

The Official Roxette Fanclub has published four previously unseen photos from “The Center Of The Heart” video shooting on their website. The video was directed by Jonas Åkerlund and was shot in Madonna Inn, California in January. The fanclub received the photos from the press department of Roxette’s Swedish record company, EMI Svenska.

• Official Roxette Fanclub

Hungary’s largest commercial radio startion, Danubius, has recently asked listeners to name their favorite songs. In their Top 300 countdown, featuring all time international and Hungarian hits, Roxette is present with five songs: “Sleeping In My Car,” “Listen To Your Heart,” “It Must Have Been Love,” “How Do You Do” and “Joyride.” No other artists achieved such a result. Roxette songs ranked way higher that those of such present-day teen idols as the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.

• Danubius R·diÛ

The Daily Roxette has reported that previously unknown songs written by Per and Marie were found listed in BMI’s online database. One of the titles was “The Center Of The Heart (Is A Suburb To The Brain)” which – as we know now – will be the lead single from their forthcoming album, “Room Service.”

  Per has now come forward to say that the other titles “are defintely Roxette’s however they are not the songs from the ’Room Service’ album” and that “it should not take too long before we can release them to you.”

  It is unknown why the songs were registered with BMI before their release. For example, “Entering Your Heart”, the b-side track for “The Center Of The Heart” single, is not yet listed in BMI’s Hyper Repertoire service.

The Official Roxette Fanclub has now put a 30-second sound clip on their website. Visitors can choose between downloading an MP3 file (469 KB) or the same file in a compressed ZIP archive (467 KB).

  The fanclub was supposed to release the sound clip on February 19th at midnight Central European time, but as the full song has already been available on Napster, the fanclub apparently got permission from EMI to put the clip online ahead of that schedule.

• Official Roxette Fanclub

UPDATED The Daily Roxette is gathering links to online articles about the new album “Room Service” and the first single.

Latest articles:

• Expressen 2/7/2001: Smalare Gessle med bantat Roxette (Swedish)
  

“The Center Of The Heart” on Napster

• Aftonbladet 2/9/2001: Roxettes osläppta singel på Napster (Swedish)

• Expressen 2/9/2001: Roxettes nya singel på Napster (Swedish)
  

Please submit your article links using the feedback form. Thanks for your help! Read the entire article for more links. Read more…

The cover art is still missing, and the song clips are unavailable, but on EMI Germany’s website, you can find “The Centre Of The Heart” listed. Retail outlets can order product number 8790312 which is described as a “Maxi-CD” with “Entering Your Heart” as the second track.

EDITOR’S NOTE: T-Rox contributed to this article. – LEO

• EMI Germany’s product listing

A brief note in Rolling Stone’s music news asks their readers if they “remember the Swedish pop duo Roxette?” It goes on to mention the release date of the new single and album.

UPDATED – Graham Ashton, a spokesman for EMI Australia, reports that while these dates are yet to be “100% confirmed,” it looks likely that “The Center of the Heart” single will be released on March 19th while the album, “Room Service,” will be released on May 2nd.

  Additionally, the single should begin to air March 5th on radio and February 26th on “Video Hits.”

The upcoming Roxette single “The Center Of The Heart (Is A Suburb To The Brain)” found its way onto Napster this week. The track is an up-tempo song with both Per and Marie singing. The song has generated a huge response from fans who have been able to hear it. Many have endorsed Roxette’s decision to release an up-tempo single track, but the song’s similarity to Savage Garden’s “I Want You” has disturbed others. Some even claim that the song sounds more like a demo or a remix than a radio track.

  It’s unknown who the individual was that put the song on Napster in the first place. EMI Svenska started this week to send out promo singles to the media and local EMI offices, so it was probably someone amongst these people.

  “The Center Of The Heart” is the first single release from Roxette’s new album “Room Service”. Airplay of the single is scheduled to start on February 19th. Retail version will be released on March 19th. The album will be released worldwide by EMI on April 2nd, excluding the USA where Edel America Records will release it a day later on April 3rd. Read more…

NEW YORK - By listening to recorded music and interview segments, and purchasing a custom CD, Roxette fans have helped syndicated radio show RetroRewind raise over $500 for charity in about a month’s time.

  As we previously reported, RetroRewind was here in Times Square last fall when Roxette performed a promo concert at Virgin Megastore. In order to raise money for the National Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Roxette allowed Dave Harris, the program’s host and one of our readers, to distribute the recordings to fans via a site on MP3.com.

  Since these segments were first posted, Harris has added “Listen To Your Heart.” This particular song will only remain there for a very short time, as the recording is not of the same quality as the other four songs.

  A small amount of money is earned from MP3.com each time one of the files is listened to or downloaded, a little more when a CD is sold. This all adds up… and the total at presstime was $509.52.

• RetroRewind’s Roxette Files